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Using 1970 population levels, conservation groups have determined that 58% of animal populations will be lost mainly due to human activity. The most loss will take place in lakes and rivers. Part of this is also caused by issues with climate change. Although the situation seems grave, there is still hope that people can change courses and try and help as much as they can.

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An incendiary new report from two major conservation groups predicts dire circumstances for the world's wild animals, warning that two-thirds of vertebrate populations could be wiped out by 2020, based on 1970 population levels.

The new report, called the Living Planet Index, was prepared by the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London. The index found that animal populations dropped by 58 percent between 1970 and 2012, largely as a result of human activities, from poaching to habitat loss and pollution.

The team then extrapolated those trends forward to 2020. They based their analysis on data collected in the field on more than 14,000 populations of vertebrates, from 3,700 different species. The data came from many sources, from all around the world.

The researchers concluded that lakes and rivers saw the steepest declines in resident animals. Groups that have fared particularly badly include marine mammals, fish, and some birds ( especially vultures).

We must "act now to reform our food and energy systems and meet global commitments on addressing climate change, protecting biodiversity and supporting sustainable development," the report begins.

"Global biodiversity is declining at an alarming rate, putting the survival of other species and our own future at risk," the index warns.

But hang on, says National Geographic explorer and conservation scientist Stuart Pimm of Duke University, who was not involved with the report.

"Trying to take all those different data sets, from all over the world, and putting that in a blender and trying to break that down into one number is irresponsible," Pimm says. "That's disingenuous and not helpful."

Pimm says there is far too much variability across different regions, from the land to the sea, and too much uncertainty to predict a dire crash of all species. Further, the report "depresses people to no end, and suggests there is no hope," he says.

"But there is a lot of hope around the world," Pimm adds.

He points to the recent successes in stemming the decline of lions, tigers, and other big cats across Africa and Asia, some of which has been spearheaded by National Geographic's Big Cats Initiative, which Pimm works on.

As another example, a recent study found that coral reefs are actually doing better, and are more resilient in the face of warming seas and acidification, than scientists had thought.

Although conservationists face many challenges in protecting endangered species and their habitat, the actual issues they face are more varied and subtle than a single number of index can convey, says Pimm.

Such reports may be more about trying to grab attention and raise money than sound science, he says.

Conservation biologist Luke Dollar, who leads National Geographic's Big Cats Initiative, says he agrees with Pimm's assessment of the Living Planet Index. "That said, there's no question that a great number of populations of myriad species are in substantial decline, and will continue to demand ever-increasing efforts to stem their loss and protect the systems of which they are a part," says Dollar.

"The need for self-awareness and proactive measures to mitigate our ever-increasing impact on wildlife has also never been greater," says Dollar.
This story was updated at 6:30 pm ET with comments from Luke Dollar.

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World to Lose Two-Thirds of Wild Animals by 2020?

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An incendiary new report from two major conservation groups predicts dire circumstances for the world's wild animals, warning that two-thirds of vertebrate populations could be wiped out by 2020, based on 1970 population levels. The new report, called the Living Planet Index, was prepared by the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London.

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San Francisco is now required to have a certain amount of buildings with "green roofs". This is a requirement to grow plants above the rooflines and its purpose is to further help the planet. Not only is it incredibly aesthetic but it also helps with issues such as runoff, air quality, and the urban heat island effect. The city also gives an alternative of installing solar panels which can also help the environment.

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This week, San Francisco became the first U.S. city to require that certain new buildings be built with a green roof -an eco-friendly design technique that sows plants above a roofline. This latest action builds on a growing trend that has taken root around the world, and which boosters say offers significant benefits for the planet.

The new law, going into effect in January, will require between 15 to 30 percent of roof space on most new construction projects to incorporate solar, green roofs, or a blend of both.

The ordinance builds on an earlier bill passed by the city's Board of Supervisors in April that requires new residential and commercial buildings 10 stories or shorter to install solar panels or a solar heating system that covers 15 percent of the roof.

"I think a lot of people have always wondered why we haven't better used our roofs," said San Francisco Supervisor Scott Weiner, who introduced both bills.

Some of the city's developers have supported the new green roof law, saying they are glad it offers an additional alternative to meet eco-friendly requirements. Green roofs are cheaper to install than solar panels.

The EPA estimates green roofs start at about $10 per square foot for simple projects, or up to $25 per square foot for more ambitious designs (although they can also save building occupants money down the line).

Green roof legislation is being passed around the world. Cordoba became the first city in Argentina to require green roofs in July. France's new legislation mandates at least partial coverage of green roof or solar technology on all new construction and goes into effect next March. In 2009, Toronto mandated green roofs on industrial and residential buildings. Germany's green roof industry has been legislated and supported by the government in various ways since the 1970s.

The Benefits of Green Roofs

Green roofs reduce stormwater runoff, improve air quality, and help mitigate the urban heat island effect. For building tenants and owners, green roofs reduce the need for heating and cooling. They also can provide food and a recreational area for residents.

Combining solar panels and green roofs can actually make each component work better. Solar panels can provide shade for plants and grasses, reducing the need for watering, while the panels work best when they are cool (green roofs can help lower temperatures compared to conventional ones).

"There is a win-win between solar and green roofs," said Steven Peck, the founder and president of Green Roofs for Healthy Cities.

San Francisco's legislation came out of work started in 2013 by the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association's Green Roof Task Force. Jeff Joslin, a director at San Francisco's Planning Department, said that the group created a map of green roofs in the city, developed a roadmap for policy, produced a cost-benefit analysis and an implementation manual for how to install and maintain green roofs in the region's climate. Joslin said that despite being a city known for innovation, there was a lot of work to do.

"We were lagging far behind other major cities," Joslin said.

Peck said there are about 25 North American cities that support green roofs to some extent, from bigger cities to medium and smaller communities like Syracuse and Port Coquitlam in British Columbia. Washington D.C. has a de facto requirement for large buildings through its stormwater regulations. New York City has tax abatements.

Valuable green building certifications, such as LEED, also award points for green roofs, so they are popping up across the country even without legislation.

The United States has come far from when Peck started working in green roofs 20 years ago. There was a single research facility in Quebec. Most of what he could find on the technique was in German.

Now, there are over 75 institutions from NASA to Penn State doing research on green roofs. Still, the United States has catching up to do. According to Peck, this year Germany installed an estimated 10 million square meters.

"[The United States] did about seven to eight million square meters and we are four times bigger than they are," Peck said.

More than ever, Peck said, green roofs and green infrastructure is becoming an imperative. As climate change makes regions hotter and urban areas grow, cities with green roofs will get an array of benefits that will improve quality of life for their citizens.

"The cities that invest in green infrastructure will be cities that thrive next century," Peck said.

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This week, San Francisco became the first U.S. city to require that certain new buildings be built with a green roof -an eco-friendly design technique that sows plants above a roofline. This latest action builds on a growing trend that has taken root around the world, and which boosters say offers significant benefits for the planet.

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A 6.6 earthquake on Sunday morning took place near Rome causing a lot of damage but no deaths. The earthquakes recently have been damaging the fault. This can cause more frequent earthquakes which can be problematic for Europe. The danger focuses in Italy and western Greece along with some parts of western Asia. Scientists are observing the faults for any further information.

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A 6.6-magnitude earthquake rocked central Italy on Sunday morning, and is believed to be the strongest quake to hit the nation in decades.

The earthquake at about 7:40 a.m. local time was centered near Norcia, Italy, a town in the Perugia region about 150 kilometers northeast of Rome. Aftershocks were reported as far away as Venice. The quake brought down several buildings but no deaths were reported; many had evacuated (25,000 are now reportedly displaced) after the area experienced a foreshock of a lower magnitude.

Italy Prime Minister Matteo Renzi called the quake "the strongest since the Irpinia one," a 6.9-magnitude earthquake in southern Italy in November 1980 that killed some 3,000 people.

An earthquake of a comparable magnitude (6.2) hit the region in August, killing more than 300 people.

Though the damage caused by the most recent quake is less significant than that of the August quake, the tremors could still mean disaster for the region.

The cause of the earthquakes is well known. The faults that run through Italy are moving apart at a speed of three millimeters per year. This causes insecurities in the fault, as evidenced by the recent earthquake. ( Read our earthquake explainer.)

The August quake damaged two nearby faults, Laga and Vettore. The latest earthquakes have further broken portions of the Vetorre fault, but it remains to be seen how deep the damage goes.

If the latest tremors damaged deeper portions of the fault, the extent of the damage may not be evident on the surface.

"This would be what we call 'depth segmentation' where the shallow portions break followed by the deeper portions. And it means you can have an earthquake repeating more frequently on the same faults," Dr. Richard Walters, an earth sciences lecturer at Durham University in the U.K., told the BBC.

Experts are monitoring the sites for changes. They will be taking series of satellite images and comparing them to images from before the quake in an attempt to determine whether there have been any major geologic shifts.

If the faults have indeed been damaged on a deeper level, the number of earthquakes could increase dramatically.

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Italy's Most Violent Tremor in Decades May Have Long-Term Impact

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A 6.6-magnitude earthquake rocked central Italy on Sunday morning, and is believed to be the strongest quake to hit the nation in decades. The earthquake at about 7:40 a.m. local time was centered near Norcia, Italy, a town in the Perugia region about 150 kilometers northeast of Rome.

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Many two headed sharks have been found recently. The phenomenon is most common in bull sharks as they can carry up to 50 babies. It is currently unknown as to what causes the mutation but it is most probably  a genetic deformity. Some say over fishing may be a cause as it limits the gene pool. Scientists are further studying the sharks found in order to understand more.

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Two-headed sharks may sound like a figment of the big screen, but they exist-and more are turning up worldwide, scientists say.

And a 2011 study described conjoined twins discovered in blue sharks caught in the Gulf of California and northwestern Mexico. Blue sharks have produced the most recorded two-headed embryos because they carry so many babies-up to 50 at at time, says study leader Felipe Galván-Magaña, of the National Polytechnic Institute in Mexico.

Now, Spanish researchers have identified an embryo of an Atlantic sawtail catshark with two heads, according to a new study in the Journal of Fish Biology. While raising sharks for human-health research in the laboratory, a team noticed the unusual embryo in a see-through shark egg.

The catshark embyro was not your average two-headed beast-it's the first such specimen known from an oviparous shark species, or a shark that lays eggs.

Researchers opened the egg to study the specimen, and study leader Valentín Sans-Coma says it's unknown whether the deformed animal would have survived. Because it's the first such conjoined twin found in egg-laying sharks, its likely that such offspring don't live long enough for people to find them.

Mutation Causes

Two-headed sharks have been few and far between, so it's tough to know what's behind the mutations. ( See more shark pictures.)

Sans-Coma and colleagues say a genetic disorder seems to be the most plausible cause for the two-headed catshark, since the embryos were grown in a lab among nearly 800 specimens. To the best of their knowledge, the eggs were not exposed to any infections, chemicals, or radiation.

But wild sharks' malformations could come from a variety of factors, including viral infections, metabolic disorders, pollution, or a dwindling gene pool due to overfishing, which leads to inbreeding, and thus genetic abnormalities. (See " New Diseases, Toxins Harming Marine Life.")

For another recent study, marine scientist Nicolas Ehemann examined two such specimens: A smalleye smooth-hound shark and a blue shark, found by fishermen off Venezuela's Margarita Island. The animals, which would not have survived, are the first two-headed sharks found in the Caribbean Sea, according to Ehemann's research bulletin.

Overfishing to Blame?

Ehemann, a master's student at the National Polytechnic Institute in Mexico, believes that if the two-headed fetuses are more prevalent in nature, then overfishing is a strong culprit as it may cause the gene pool to shrink.

Galván-Magaña, who authored the 2011 study, doesn't think two-headed sharks are more common-but rather that there are more scientific journals around to publish accounts.

Galván-Magaña has seen other bizarre sharks, too, including a "cyclops" shark, caught off Mexico in 2011, with a single, functioning eye at the front of its head. The dusky shark fetus's single eye is the hallmark of a congenital condition called cyclopia, which occurs in several animal species, including people.

Meanwhile, Ehemann says shark deformities are a difficult topic to research because the specimens are so rare.

"I would like to study these things, but it's not like you throw out a net and you catch two-headed sharks every so often," he says. "It's random."
Follow Joshua Rapp Learn on Twitter.

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Two-Headed Sharks Keep Popping Up-No One Knows Why

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Two-headed sharks may sound like a figment of the big screen, but they exist-and more are turning up worldwide, scientists say. And a 2011 study described conjoined twins discovered in blue sharks caught in the Gulf of California and northwestern Mexico.

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Many puffins have been dying in the Bering Sea since October. Why is this? The sea has been unnaturally warm. This destroys the food source of many other animals in the area causing their deaths as well. It is still unknown how much of this is due to climate change. Scientists are currently studying and researching the situation for a broader understanding.

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The tufted puffins started washing ashore on St. Paul Island in mid-October-first a handful, then dozens, then so many that volunteers patrolling to collect dead birds began walking their four-wheelers rather than riding. It was easier than getting off every few feet.

The hundreds of dead, emaciated puffins showing up on this isolated, wind-swept scratch of land in the Pribilof Islands in the middle of the North Pacific suddenly has scientists worried-about the population of this white-masked, orange-beaked seabird, but also about what their deaths may portend for the normally productive Bering Sea.

A stretch of water that provides more seafood than any other in North America saw such record-warm temperatures earlier this year that scientists suspect the ocean food web there has shifted. That could spell big downturns for marine life, from seabirds and fur seals to salmon, crab and the $1 billion-a-year pollock fishing industry that provides flaky white filets for everything from McDonald's fish sandwiches to frozen fish sticks.

"The Bering Sea has been off-the-charts warm," said Nate Mantua, an ecologist at NOAA's Southwest Fisheries Science Center in Santa Cruz, California. "We've never seen anything like this. We're in uncharted territory. We're in the midst of an extraordinary time."

In the last few years another patch of unusually warm water that settled into the Gulf of Alaska and merged with warm waters in southern California completely transformed the coastal ocean. For months, scientists off Oregon found almost none of the fatty-rich copepods that form the base of the food web. Sea lions, common murres, and Cassin's auklets died by the thousands because of a lack of food. Scores of whales and sea otters turned up dead in Alaska. The West Coast saw it's most toxic and longest-lasting harmful algal bloom ever. ( Read more about this warm water blob.)

But the subarctic waters of the Bering Sea, coming off a strong period of cold water and record sea-ice in 2012 and 2013, seemed mostly spared. Waters were unusually warm beginning in 2014, but not ridiculously so. Last year would have seen more normal ice, if warm water from the Gulf of Alaska hadn't poured into the Bering Sea through the Aleutian Island chain and kept the ice at bay.

But all that changed this year. Even the pool of cold water that normally rests on the bottom of the Bering Sea was at times 6 degrees Celsius warmer than usual.

"The maximum summer temperatures in the Bering Sea were the warmest we've ever seen," said Phyllis Stabeno, with NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Lab. "And the minimum temperature-the coldest it gets in winter-was warmer than several of the last years."

Under normal cycles in the Pacific Ocean, warm water usually translates to less food, and so far that's what scientists are seeing, especially among the tiny copepods that are food for smaller fish and other animals. But it's actually worse than normal.

"When it's warm we usually no longer have a lot of large, fatty zooplankton around," Stabeno said. Instead, the sea usually includes smaller, less nutritious zooplankton. "But this year there just wasn't much of anything."

Said Janet Duffy-Anderson of the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, "That bodes poorly for fish and birds and mammals. It's that zooplankton prey base that provides food for young pollock that are then eaten by birds and cod and halibut and even older pollock."

That appears to be what has happened with puffins in the remote Pribolofs.

Mass Deaths

In early October, Lauren Divine, co-director of the ecosystem conservation office for St. Paul's Aleut community, was given two dead puffins to take back to Anchorage for research. At the time she though little of it. On this 40-square-mile island, of roughly 500 people, dead birds wash up once in awhile.

But within a few days it was obvious something was wrong.

"On the 17th we started doing surveys of the two main beaches and we came up with about 40 birds that first day," said volunteer Aaron Lestenkof. "Since then it's been about 20 to 30 birds each time we go out."

Several hundred birds have now washed up, nearly 200 times the normal rate. And since St. Paul and its rocky sister island, St. George, are the only land masses anywhere nearby, scientists are certain they're seeing just a tiny fraction of the deaths.

"In 10 years of monitoring, we've only seen six puffins wash in-total," said Julia Parrish, a University of Washington professor who coordinates a West Coast volunteer bird-monitoring network. "Now we've seen nearly 250 in 20 days. And these islands are small dots in the middle of a huge ocean. The entire puffin population is only 6,000 birds, and we project half that many may be affected."

Parrish said the birds-deep-diving fish eaters that chow on forage fish, such as baby walleye pollock-aren't sick. Scientists see no evidence of disease. The animals are just in such an advanced state of starvation "they appear to be eating themselves inside out." Even if she wasn't already aware of the last two years of bird die-off events along the West Coast and Alaska, she said, this is unusual enough to be worrisome.

Puffins have seen trouble before. One year after the unusually warm 2012, Atlantic puffins in the Gulf of Maine suffered their worst reproductive season ever-until this year. Breeding of puffins in Iceland has been collapsing for a decade. But along the Pacific adults are simply washing up dead.

"Clearly something very weird is going on," Parrish said. "It's basically every year now we're getting some huge mass-mortality event. It seems that the bottom-up changes provoked by the atmosphere are creating massive, massive changes in marine ecosystems. And the forage fish that everything depends on are taking it in the shorts."

What does that mean for the rest of the creatures in the ocean?

"We don't know," Parrish said. "The Bering Sea is an incredibly big place, and we're just seeing this now." ( Learn how puffins are tougher than they look.)

What's Causing the Warmth?

Mantua said the strange behavior in the atmosphere that helped the Gulf of Alaska's warm "blob" form in 2013 shifted again late this spring, with a high-pressure system setting up over the entire North Pacific. That led to an extended warm period across Alaska from May through September.

Then, in October, the patterns changed again, with significant storms in the Gulf of Alaska. But in the Bering Sea wind brought warm air and water from out of the south.

"These patterns in the atmosphere are big," he said. "They span much of the North Pacific and can create warm or cold patches at the same time. But it's the fact that there has been so much persistence in these patterns that has led to such extraordinary ocean temperatures. That, to me, is the big mystery. We just keep going from one extreme to another. If you get 10 or 12 days that are stuck in the same pattern, then the ocean is going to slowly build up heat."

Scientists are still grappling with trying to determine how much of this change is likely linked to climate change. Some have argued that melting sea ice has affected the jet stream, causing it to be more wobbly. Others have suggested these strange anomalies are connected to warmth in the tropics but are largely just extreme versions of normal climate fluctuations.

Regardless, for now, marine scientists are planning to spend extra time at sea, trying to assess what all this means for the North Pacific-particularly for Alaska's fishing industry, which supplies half the nation's catch of seafood.

"We're going to go back out and do some more surveying, because we're pretty worried," said Duffy-Anderson.

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Huge Puffin Die-Off May Be Linked to Climate Change

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The tufted puffins started washing ashore on St. Paul Island in mid-October-first a handful, then dozens, then so many that volunteers patrolling to collect dead birds began walking their four-wheelers rather than riding. It was easier than getting off every few feet.

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As the US election draws closer it is important to be aware of the stances our options take on environmental issues. One large issue that has been taking a role in this election is the problem of climate change. Clinton recognizes it as an urgent threat whilst Trump continues to believe it is a hoax. Even from a non biased standpoint, Clinton is the better environmental option.

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As Americans go to the polls today, the votes they cast for president will have major implications for science and the environment. Here's a last look at where the major candidates in the 2016 presidential election stand:

Climate Change and Renewable Energy

On climate change, the views of the United States's two major political parties appear worlds apart.

In keeping with scientific evidence, Clinton has said that climate change is real, caused by humans and "an urgent threat and a defining challenge of our time."

She wants to build on the Obama administration's climate policy, with the goal of reducing emissions by up to 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2025, and by more than 80 percent by 2050. That goal aligns with the U.S. commitment under the UN's Paris Agreement, the international climate pact that came into force on November 4. ( Find out more about the Paris Agreement.)

Trump, on the other hand, has long questioned whether climate change is real, and he has dismissed claims that it poses a major threat. In public statements and in his campaign platform, Trump has expressed interest in scuttling the Clean Power Plan, rescinding the Obama administration's Climate Action Plan, and "canceling" the Paris Agreement-in the hopes of bolstering economic growth with a resurgent U.S. fossil fuel industry.

Animal welfare has not been a major issue on the campaign trail, but public statements and platforms have given some insight into the candidates' stances.

As National Geographic reported earlier this year, the Republican Party called out the lesser prairie chicken, sage grouse, and the gray wolf in its platform, as examples of species either not in need of protection or too expensive to protect.

Trump's agriculture advisers include Forrest Lucas, a principal founder of Protect the Harvest, an organization founded in opposition to the Humane Society of the United States. The group has defended the use of animals in circuses, and Lucas has fought against laws mandating space requirements for egg-laying hens.

Clinton's platform also calls for "shutting down the U.S. market for illegal wildlife products," as well as further action against international wildlife trafficking.

When she was a senator, Clinton had high marks from the Humane Society Legislative Fund, a lobbying affiliate of the Humane Society of the United States, garnering an average score of 89.5 out of 100 from 2005 to 2008. The group's score graded legislators on their stances on issues such as felony-level penalties for dogfighting.

National Parks and Public Lands

Both Clinton and Trump have expressed opposition to selling America's public lands, which include national parks, monuments, forests, and areas controlled by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Some conservative federal and state lawmakers, including many in the western United States, want federal control transferred or sold to states or private entities.

In a January 2016 interview with Field & Stream, Trump said "we have to be great stewards of this land" and expressed doubt that transferring federal land to state control would ensure sound stewardship. He also said that he would not reduce the percentage of the federal budget dedicated to maintaining public lands. In a January 2016 interview with Petersen's HUNTING, Trump said that if he were president, there would be no sale of public lands in the West. ( Read more about the contentious history of public lands in the U.S. West.)

Public Health

There hasn't been a lot of discussion about public health in the 2016 campaign, beyond some rancor over the hot-button issue of reproductive rights. The Zika crisis that grabbed headlines earlier in the year largely faded from the mainstream view through the long summer, as a broad invasion of the disease-carrying mosquitoes failed to materialize.

But there are big differences between the two candidates in public health issues, says Boston physician Aaron Stupple, who penned an op-ed critical of Trump that was published by Cleveland.com and other outlets.

"[Trump's] disregard for facts and science stands to undermine our efforts to tackle complex health care challenges, from the basics of providing quality care to emerging issues like opioid abuse and the Zika virus," Stupple wrote.

The Kaiser Family Foundation notes that Trump has not presented any public position on Zika or public health preparedness in general. When he has addressed health he threatened legal action against women for getting an abortion and said, contrary to evidence, that abortions often happen days before birth.

Clinton has voiced public support for emergency funding for Zika and asked Congress for $1.8 billion in March to fight the disease. She has also called for increased investment in public health preparedness, including the creation of a Public Health Rapid Response Fund. She also supports access to comprehensive reproductive care for every woman in the country, including abortion.
Brian Clark Howard contributed to this story.

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A Last Look at the U.S. Presidential Candidates' Stances on Science

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As Americans go to the polls today, the votes they cast for president will have major implications for science and the environment. Here's a last look at where the major candidates in the 2016 presidential election stand: Climate Change and Renewable Energy On climate change, the views of the United States's two major political parties appear worlds apart.