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This article talks about what is best for the animal, people, and cost wise when it comes to meat. Due to the high demand of meat farmers have to keep up with the need for meat so most make the switch to factory farming for efficiency.

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Certified humane meat has been gaining in popularity as the public learns more about factory farms. Some activists call for reforms and labeling of humanely raised and slaughtered meat, but others argue we cannot work on reforms and promote animal rights at the same time.

Background

In a factory farm, animals are treated as commodities. Breeding sows are confined in gestation stalls, pigs have their tails cut off without anesthesia, calves spend their entire lives tethered by their necks in veal crates, andegg-laying hens are debeaked and kept in cages too small to spread their wings in.

The search for solutions has focused on two paths, one reforming the system and instituting more humane standards, and the other promoting veganism so that fewer animals are bred, raised, and slaughtered. While few animal activists disagree with promoting veganism, some believe that campaigning for reforms and humane labeling is counter-productive.

Humane standards can either be required by law or instituted voluntarily by farmers. Farmers who voluntarily agree to higher humane standards are either opposed to factory farming or are trying to appeal to consumers who prefer meat from humanely raised and slaughtered animals.

There is no single definition of "humane meat," and many animal activists would say that the term is an oxymoron. Different meat producers and organizations have their own humane standards by which they abide. One example is the " Certified Humane Raised and Handled " label that is backed by the Humane Society of the U.S., the ASPCA, and other non-profits.

Humane standards might include larger cages, no cages, natural feed, less painful methods of slaughter, or prohibition of practices such as tail docking or debeaking.

In some cases, campaigns target retailers or restaurants instead of the actual producers, pressuring the companies to purchase animal products only from producers who raise the animals according to certain voluntary standards. One example is PETA's McCruelty campaign that asks McDonald's to require their producers to switch to a more humane method of slaughtering chickens.

Arguments for Humane Meat

People will continue to eat meat for the foreseeable future, so humane standards will ensure that the animals will have a better life than they have in factory farms now.

Since some people will never be convinced to go vegan, humane standards are the only way we can help the animals who will be raised for food no matter what else we do.

Humane standards will eliminate the cruelest factory farming practices.

Humane standards have broad-based support, so goals are achievable. Many people are opposed to factory farming but are not opposed to eating meat or other animal products. According to Humane Farm Animal Care:

A recent study on behalf of the United Egg Producers found that three out of four American consumers (75%) would choose food products certified as protecting animal care over those that are not.

Humane regulations on a state or federal level provide relief to millions of animals.

Humane standards are a step towards animal rights. By promoting humane standards, we persuade people to care about animals, which will lead some to vegetarianism and veganism.

Arguments Against Humane Meat

There is no such thing as humane meat. Using an animal for food violates the animal's right to life and freedom, and cannot be humane.

Calling some animal products "humane" leads people to believe that animals do not suffer on "humane" farms when in fact, they do. For example, male babies of egg-laying hens are still killed, and male dairy cattle are still killed. Also, HumaneMyth.org explains:

At all farms, large-scale and small-scale, laying hens are killed when their production declines, typically within two years, as feeding these worn-out individuals cuts directly into profits. Often the bodies of "spent" hens are so ravaged that no one will buy them, and they are ground into fertilizer or just sent to a landfill.

Some humane standards can be woefully inadequate, even by animal welfare standards. Giving animals enough room to spread their wings or turn around does not mean they will have enough room to fly or walk around. They will still be crowded and will still suffer.

Requiring larger cages or larger pens will require more space and more deforestation than factory farms already require. Nine billion land animals are killed for human consumption every year in the U.S. Giving 9 billion animals enough land to roam would be an environmental disaster.

Humane meat is not more sustainable than factory farming. The animals will require just as much food and water, if not more because they will be moving around more and exercising more.

Humane meat campaigns sometimes send a confusing message. Nine years after declaring victory in their McCruelty campaign against McDonald's, PETA resurrected their McCruelty campaign in 2008 to make further demands.

Instituting humane standards causes some vegetarians and vegans to start consuming meat and other animal products again.

Spending resources on reform campaigns take movement resources away from campaigns to promote veganism.

Humane standards do nothing to challenge the right of humans to use other animals and have nothing to do with animal rights. We should promote veganism instead of more "humane" ways of exploiting animals.

Animal activists sometimes debate whether promoting veganism helps animals more than humane reforms, but we may never know. The debate is one that divides some groups and activists, but the animal agriculture industry fights both types of campaigns.

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Certified humane meat has been gaining in popularity as the public learns more about factory farms. Some activists call for reforms and labeling of humanely raised and slaughtered meat, but others argue we cannot work on reforms and promote animal rights at the same time. In a factory farm, animals are treated as commodities.

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This article talks about the rules and regulations that must be met by farmers when owning and raising cattle. It also mentions the different environmental laws that must be followed in order to keep the Earth safe.

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On-Farm Land Use: Regulations and Environmental Stewardship

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Northeast beef cattle owners are faced with implementing best management practices, as well as adhering to local, statewide and national regulations.

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This article goes over the impact humans have on land such as urbanization.

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Major land-use changes have occurred in the United States during the past 25 years. The total area of cropland, pastureland and rangeland decreased by 76 million acres in the lower 48 states from 1982 to 2003, while the total area of developed land increased by 36 million acres or 48%.

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This article talks about how strip mining effects the environment by things such as soil erosion.

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strip mining - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics

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In case of a deep-seated bedded deposit within permissible stripping ratio the overburden is removed by opening successive and progressive benches. It continues till sufficient area over the ore is exposed. The multiple seam mining is done by operating first pair of overburden and coal bed at a time and followed by second and third pairs in sequence.

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This article talks about how hydro mining negatively effects the environment

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In 1998, California held hundreds of events to mark the sesquicentennial of the Gold Rush. There were gold-panning competitions, re-enactments of the Pony Express Ride and tours of working gold mines. It was after this celebration that many of the harmful environmental effects of the gold rush, and mining were brought to light. The EPA learned that the Polar Star Mine had been abandoned with four pounds of gold and forty pounds of mercury. It was at that point the realization hit that mercury contamination was indeed from mining and not air pollution as was earlier thought.

Hydraulic mining was prohibited in 1884 when it was discovered that the mining resulted in worsened flood conditions and also destroyed farmland. It wasn't known until much later that Hydraulic mining also left behind a huge amount of arsenic, mercury, cyanide and acid which contaminated the ground-waters, soil, rivers and lakes. There is much debate raging over how to handle the now generations old continuing contamination and environmental effects first started by the 1849 gold rush. The amount and severity of the poisons and harmful chemicals and minerals left by mining may never be erased. Some want a more pro-active than reactive approach by the government to clean up the contamination, although whether this can be done completely and successfully remains to be seen.

With the bicentennial of the Gold rush coming in 2049, State officials are scrambling to come up with solutions to the contamination problems and environmental effects left as a result of hydraulic mining. Instead of the state being romanticized as it once was for the gold rush, it is now being criticized. The gold rush will forever be a part of history, and the current government wants its legacy to be one of correcting the problems brought on by the historic period.

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In 1998, California held hundreds of events to mark the sesquicentennial of the Gold Rush. There were gold-panning competitions, re-enactments of the Pony Express Ride and tours of working gold mines. It was after this celebration that many of the harmful environmental effects of the gold rush, and mining were brought to light.

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(Image courtesy of NOAA)

Adding to concerns about the disastrous decline in ocean ecosystems, now there is another emerging threat - deep sea mining. While shallow water mining for sand, gold, tin, and diamonds has been conducted for decades, commercial deep sea mining has yet to occur anywhere. But that's about to change.

Extensive deep sea mineral exploration is currently underway in international waters governed by the International Seabed Authority (ISA), under the U.N. Convention on Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and within Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) of many coastal nations.

There are currently three main types of deep sea mineral deposits of interest to industry and governments:

1. Polymetallic nodules (also called "manganese nodules") are potato-sized metal nodules found on the abyssal plain from 4,000 m - 6,000 m deep. These nodules are rich in manganese, nickel, cobalt, copper, lithium, molybdenum, iron, and Rare Earth Elements. Nodules grow slowly over millions of years, to diameters from 5 cm - 50 cm, and host unique invertebrate communities. Currently, 13 national consortia operate exploration leases on 4.5 million km2 of the Clarion-Clipperton (Fracture) Zone (CCZ), between Baja and Hawaii. The U.S., as a non-party to UNCLOS and ISA, issued exploration leases on its own to Ocean Minerals Company (OMCO), a subsidiary of defense contractor Lockheed Martin, to explore for nodules in the CCZ. The only nodule deposits being seriously considered within a national EEZ at present are in the Cook Islands in South Pacific.

2. Seafloor Massive Sulphide (SMS) deposits are found beneath deep sea hydrothermal vents along the 67,000 km of volcanically active mid-ocean ridges and back arc basins, between 1,500 m - 5,000 m deep. These contain high-grade copper, gold, silver, zinc, and other trace metals. Deep sea hydrothermal vent ecosystems were first discovered in 1977 at the Galapagos Rift, and stunned the world of science, as these vent systems rely entirely on chemosynthesis rather than photosynthesis - the first ever known. Over 300 deep sea vent systems have been discovered so far, and it is estimated that perhaps only 500 - 5,000 may exist in the world ocean, making this one of rarest ecosystems in Earth's biosphere. China and Korea hold contracts to explore SMS deposits in international waters of the Indian Ocean, and Russia and France hold exploration leases on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Other SMS deposits being considered are in waters of Papua New Guinea (PNG), Vanuatu, Palau, Niue, Fiji, Micronesia, Solomon Islands, Tonga, and New Zealand. The Nautilus Minerals "Solwara 1" project in PNG waters is fully permitted, the mining ship and equipment are being built, and mining is scheduled to begin in 2018. This would be the first commercial deep sea mining project in history.

3. Cobalt-rich ferromanganese crusts are found on summits and flanks of seamounts at 400 m - 4,000 m depth. There are some 10,000 seamounts in oceans rising at least 1,000 m above the seabed (and perhaps another 90,000 smaller seamounts). Many are in EEZs of central Pacific islands (Federated States of Micronesia, Marshall Islands, Hawaii, Johnston Atoll), and in international waters of the tropical Pacific. Metal crusts form on shoulders of seamounts, rich in cobalt, nickel, copper, iron, manganese; rare metals such as tungsten, platinum, bismuth, tellurium, etc.; and Rare Earth Elements. Crusts grow slowly, 1 mm - 5 mm per million years, and can reach total thickness of up to 260 mm. Seamount crusts are currently being explored by China and Japan in international waters of the western tropical Pacific, but many feel actual mining of seamount crusts would be by far the most problematic and least feasible.

Marine phosphate (fertilizer) and methane hydrate (energy) resources found in shallower waters, 100 m - 500 m deep, are often discussed in context with deep sea minerals. Marine phosphate mining is in consideration off Namibia (currently under moratorium), New Zealand (the environmental permit was denied earlier this year, but the developer is considering reapplying next year), and off Baja Mexico, where Odyssey Marine has submitted its EIA for mining the Don Diego phosphate deposit in 70 m water depth, 12-25 miles offshore. Japan has successfully tested methane hydrate, or "fire ice," extraction from its offshore waters.

But here's the problem. The deep ocean, where mining is proposed, constitutes the largest and least understood biological habitat on Earth. It's an Alice-in-Wonderland world of extremes, extraordinary adaptions, bizarre organisms, beauty and mystery. The region is characterized by darkness (infused with sparkling bioluminescence), extreme pressure, cold temperatures, high biodiversity (perhaps millions of species, most yet to be identified), slow growth and reproductive rates, and high sensitivity to disturbance (low resilience). Given our poor understanding of deep sea ecosystems, growing industrial interest, rudimentary management, and insufficient protected areas, the risk of irreversible environmental damage here is real.

Environmental risks and impacts of deep sea mining would be enormous and unavoidable, including seabed habitat degradation over vast ocean areas, species extinctions, reduced habitat complexity, slow and uncertain recovery, suspended sediment plumes, toxic plumes from surface ore dewatering, pelagic ecosystem impacts, undersea noise, ore and oil spills in transport, and more.

Due to the global rarity of deep sea hydrothermal vent ecosystems, the impact of vent mining would be disproportionately high relative to terrestrial mining. Full-scale nodule mining on the abyssal plain would affect thousands of square miles of ocean floor, kill attached invertebrate communities, and create huge subsea sediment plumes that would flow and settle over thousands of square miles of seafloor. Such sedimentation would smother seabed habitat, reduce habitat complexity and biodiversity over vast areas, and post-mining recovery would be extremely slow. Mining of cobalt crusts on seamounts would cause enormous, possibly irreversible impacts to unique, productive seamount ecosystems.

Clearly, we need to avoid such ecological damage. Before any deep sea mining moves ahead, we would need much more extensive scientific research - species identification, community ecology, distribution, genetics, life histories, resettlement patterns, resilience to disturbance, and at least a 10-year continuous time series of observations to understand dynamics of proposed mining sites over-time. In addition, we need more robust management regimes at the ISA and in coastal nations, royalty-sharing and liability agreements, stakeholder engagement, and significant advancements in subsea technology. Until this is achieved, the only wise policy is a global moratorium on all deep sea mining.

(Image courtesy of NOAA)

The need for more deep sea Marine Protected Areas is paramount. New Zealand established its Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary this year on over 620,000 km2 of the islands and submarine volcanoes northeast of the main islands; Cook Islands established a marine reserve on 1.1 million km2 (over half) of their EEZ; the U.S. established a 1.2 million km2 Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument; and the ISA established Areas of Particular Environmental Interest (APEIs) over about half (or about 2.3 million km2) of the area currently under lease in the CCZ. This is a good start, but still insufficient.

Industry and governments recognize the huge challenges in mining the deep ocean, but are resolved to move forward anyway. As justification, they invoke the "peak minerals" argument, depletion of land-based minerals, and a projected increase in mineral demand in the world economy.

But mining proponents habitually avoid discussing the opportunity to reduce mineral demand by increasing the efficiency of metal use in the global economy, cradle-to-cradle design, recycling, and landfill mining. To build a sustainable economy, we will have to break the "economy of waste" - mining raw minerals, using them once or twice, discarding them, and continuing the demand for mining raw minerals. Surely at some point, with smart renewable metal use, we will have enough minerals already up into the global economy and won't need to keep digging holes for more. The sooner we get there, the better.

The Nautilus Minerals "Solwara 1" vent/SMS mining project in PNG waters will likely be the first deep sea mining project, with others following elsewhere in PNG, Tonga, and Fiji. Others projects to watch in national waters include Odyssey's Don Diego phosphate mining project off Baja, and manganese nodule mining in the Cook Islands. Mining on the international seabed is likely 5-10 years off, but there is intense political pressure to do so.

This emerging industry would result in serious impacts to our oceans, so it is critical for civil society to engage now, in the early stages of exploration and development. It would be truly unfortunate if we allow the same industrial paradigm that destroyed much of the terrestrial ecosystems of our home planet to do the same in the deep sea. It is time to change this model.

This is a very big deal, and we need to pay close attention. Groups such as the Deep Sea Mining Campaign, MiningWatch Canada, Greenpeace, Earthworks, and the Center for Biological Diversity are doing great work on the issue. The future of our oceans, and thus our planet, may depend on their success.

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(Image courtesy of NOAA) Adding to concerns about the disastrous decline in ocean ecosystems, now there is another emerging threat - deep sea mining. While shallow water mining for sand, gold, tin, and diamonds has been conducted for decades, commercial deep sea mining has yet to occur anywhere.

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study's have found that deep sea mining have caused a recent decline in marine life. Being so deep in below the surface they will take decades to recover it.

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Vent shrimp, a species found around hydrothermal vents on the seafloor, which are also rich in commercially valuable polymetallic sulfide deposits. Credit: NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research

Biodiversity losses from deep-sea mining are unavoidable and possibly irrevocable, an international team of 15 marine scientists, resource economists and legal scholars argue in a letter published today in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The experts say the International Seabed Authority (ISA), which is responsible under the UN Law of the Sea for regulating undersea mining in areas outside national jurisdictions, must recognize this risk. They say it must also communicate the risk clearly to its member states and the public to inform discussions about whether deep-seabed mining should proceed, and if so, what standards and safeguards need to be put into place to minimize biodiversity loss.

"There is tremendous uncertainty about ecological responses to deep-sea mining," said Cindy L. Van Dover, Harvey W. Smith Professor of Biological Oceanography at Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment. "Responsible mining needs to rely on environmental management actions that will protect deep-sea biodiversity and not on actions that are unproven or unreasonable."

"The extraction of non-renewable resources always includes tradeoffs," said Linwood Pendleton, International Chair in Marine Ecosystem Services at the European Institute of Marine Studies and an adjunct professor at Duke's Nicholas School. "A serious trade-off for deep-sea mining will be an unavoidable loss of biodiversity, including many species that have yet to be discovered."

Faced with this inevitable outcome, it's more important than ever that we understand deep-sea ecosystems and have a good idea of what we stand to lose before mining alters the seafloor forever, said Pendleton, who also serves as a senior scholar in the Oceans and Coastal Policy Program at Duke's Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

Time is of the essence, the experts stress.

"Undersea deposits of metals and rare earth elements are not yet being mined, but there has been an increase in the number of applications for mining contracts," said Elva Escobar of the National Autonomous University of Mexico's Institute of Marine Sciences and Limnology. "In 2001, there were just six deep-sea mineral exploration contracts; by the end of 2017, there will be a total of 27 projects."

A sea anemone, living at a depth of more than 4,000 meters in the Clarion Clipperton Zone of the eastern Pacific, where deep sea mining is likely to occur. Credit: National Oceanography Centre, UK

These projects include 18 contracts for polymetallic nodules, six for polymetallic sulfides and four for ferromanganese crusts, Escobar said. Of these, 17 would take place in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone in the Pacific Ocean between Hawai'i and Central America.

Industry estimates that billions of tons of manganese, copper, nickel and cobalt lie on or beneath the seafloor. These metals are used in electrical generators and motors, metal alloys, batteries, paints, and many other products.

Some mining proponents have argued that companies could offset the inevitable damage their activities will cause by restoring coastal ecosystems or creating new artificial offshore reefs. "But this is like saving apple orchards to protect oranges," Van Dover said.

"The argument that you can compensate for the loss of biological diversity in the deep sea with gains in diversity elsewhere is so ambiguous as to be scientifically meaningless," said Craig Smith, professor of oceanography at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa.

Deep-sea ecosystems and species can take decades or even centuries to recover from a disturbance, if they recover at all, Van Dover noted.

The scale of some proposed mining operations-the largest of which will cover more than 83,000 square kilometers, an area larger than Maine-and the depths at which some mining is to be conducted (three miles or more below the sea surface) will make reclamation of the affected sites so cost-prohibitive as to be unrealistic, the authors argue. And the approaches needed to perform restorative action are still largely untested.

Deep-sea scientists and legal experts from the United States, Mexico, France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Poland and Australia co-wrote the peer-reviewed correspondence with Van Dover, Pendleton, Escobar and Smith.

More information: Biodiversity loss from deep-sea mining, Nature Geoscience (2017). DOI: 10.1038/ngeo2983

Provided by: Duke University

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Biodiversity loss from deep-sea mining will be unavoidable

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Biodiversity losses from deep-sea mining are unavoidable and possibly irrevocable, an international team of 15 marine scientists, resource economists and legal scholars argue in a letter published today in the journal Nature Geoscience. The experts say the International Seabed Authority (ISA), which is responsible under the UN Law of the Sea for regulating undersea mining in areas outside national jurisdictions, must recognize this risk.

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This article talks about how in one area you may find 20 different types of grass and they all may look similar but they differ in when and where they acquire water, nutrients and carbon, and how they maintain the ecosystem. It talks about how losing one species of grass could dramatically affect they ecosystem and the population.

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In 1994 biologists seeded patches of grassland in Cedar Creek, Minn. Some plots got as many as 16 species of grasses and other plants-and some as few as one. In the first few years plots with eight or more species fared about as well as those with fewer species, suggesting that a complex mix of species-what is known as biodiversity-didn't affect the amount of a plot's leaf, blade, stem and root (or biomass, as scientists call it). But when measured over a longer span-more than a decade-those plots with the most species produced the greatest abundance of plant life.

"Different species differ in how, when and where they acquire water, nutrients and carbon, and maintain them in the ecosystem. Thus, when many species grow together, they have a wider set of traits that allow them to gain the resources needed," explains ecologist Peter Reich of the University of Minnesota, who led this research to be published in Science on May 4. This result suggests "no level of diversity loss can occur without adverse effects on ecosystem functioning." That is the reverse of what numerous studies had previously found, largely because those studies only looked at short-term outcomes.

The planet as a whole is on the cusp of what some researchers have termed the sixth mass extinction event in the planet's history: the wiping out of plants, animals and all other forms of life due to human activity. The global impact of such biodiversity loss is detailed in a meta-analysis led by biologist David Hooper of Western Washington University. His team examined 192 studies that looked at species richness and its effect on ecosystems. "The primary drivers of biodiversity loss are, in rough order of impact to date: habitat loss, overharvesting, invasive species, pollution and climate change," Hooper explains. Perhaps unsurprisingly, "biodiversity loss in the 21st century could rank among the major drivers of ecosystem change," Hooper and his colleagues wrote in Nature on May 3. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.)

Losing just 21 percent of the species in a given ecosystem can reduce the total amount of biomass in that ecosystem by as much as 10 percent-and that's likely to be a conservative estimate. And when more than 40 percent of an ecosystem's species disappear-whether plant, animal, insect, fungi or microbe-the effects can be as significant as those caused by a major drought. Nor does this analysis take into account how species extinction can both be driven by and act in concert with other changes-whether warmer average temperatures or nitrogen pollution. In the real world environmental and biological changes "are likely to be happening at the same time," Hooper admits. "This is a critical need for future research."

The major driver of human impacts on the rest of life on this planet-whether through clearing forests or dumping excess fertilizer on fields-is our need for food. Maintaining high biomass from farming ecosystems, which often emphasize monocultures (single species) while also preserving biodiversity-some species now appear only on farmland-has become a "key issue for sustainability," Hooper notes, "if we're going to grow food for nine billion people on the planet in the next 40 to 50 years."

Over the long term, maintaining soil fertility may require nurturing, creating and sparing plant and microbial diversity. After all, biodiversity itself appears to control the elemental cycles-carbon, nitrogen, water-that allow the planet to support life. Only by acting in conjunction with one another, for example, can a set of grassland plant species maintain healthy levels of nitrogen in both soil and leaf. "As soil fertility increases, this directly boosts biomass production," just as in agriculture, Reich notes. "When we reduce diversity in the landscape-think of a cornfield or a pine plantation or a suburban lawn -we are failing to capitalize on the valuable natural services that biodiversity provides."

At least one of those services is largely unaffected, however, according to Hooper's study-decomposition. Which means the bacteria and fungi will still happily break down whatever plants are left after this sixth extinction. But thousands of unique species have already been lost, most unknown even to science-a rate that could halve the total number of species on the planet by 2100, according to entomologist E. O. Wilson of Harvard University. Ghosts of species past haunt ecosystems worldwide, which have already lost not just one or another type of grass or roundworm but also some of their strength at sustaining life as a whole.

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In 1994 biologists seeded patches of grassland in Cedar Creek, Minn. Some plots got as many as 16 species of grasses and other plants-and some as few as one.

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Climate change ( along side wild fires) is the leading cause of habit loss. The new reports have suggested that they are in favor of wild plants and mammals as well as protecting the worlds natural places

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Climate Change Is Becoming a Top Threat to Biodiversity

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Warming rivals habitat loss and land degradation as a threat to global wildlife

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this article talks about species are affected by climate change. certain species will be unbalances due to the fact the some species are positively impacted and some are negatively impacted

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Climate change impacting ‘most’ species on Earth, even down to their genomes

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Three recent studies point to just how broad, bizarre, and potentially devastating climate change is to life on Earth. And we’ve only seen one degree Celsius of warming so far.

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The recent warming of the Earth has caused the oxygen levels in the deep ocean to be reduced.

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One day more than a decade ago, Eric Prince was studying the tracks of tagged fish when he noticed something odd. Blue marlin off the southeastern United States would dive a half-mile deep chasing prey. The same species off Costa Rica and Guatemala stayed near the surface, rarely dropping more than a few hundred feet.

Prince, a billfish expert who has since retired from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was stumped. He'd studied blue marlin off the Ivory Coast and Ghana, Jamaica and Brazil, and he'd never seen anything like it. Why wouldn't these expert divers dive?

The billfish, it turns out, were trying to avoid suffocation. The marlin near Guatemala and Costa Rica wouldn't plunge into the murky depths because they were avoiding a deep, gigantic and expanding swath of water that contained too little oxygen. The discovery was among the first examples of the many ways sea life is already shifting in response to a new reality that hasn't gotten much attention: Marine waters, even far out in the high seas, are losing oxygen thanks to climate change, upending where and how sea creatures live.

"This is a global problem, and global warming is making it worse," says Denise Breitburg, senior scientist at the Smithsonian Research Center. "It requires global solutions," she says.

Breitburg is the lead author of a new study published today in Science that examined all the major research on ocean oxygen loss. The authors conclude that it's emptying vast regions of the ocean, changing what and where creatures live and eat, threatening to shrink fish populations and individual fish, and making overfishing more likely. Like warming seas and ocean acidification, oxygen loss is one of the most important byproducts of climate change, but one that few people understand.

"Loss of oxygen in many ways is the destruction of an ecosystem," Breitburg says. "If we were creating vast areas on land that were uninhabitable by most animals, we'd notice. But we don't always see things like this when they are happening in the water."

Bigger Than Coastal Dead Zones

Breitburg's research isn't focused just on coastal dead zones, such as the polluted runoff-fueled area in the Gulf of Mexico, but enormous stretches of deep water in the open ocean that can extend for thousands of miles.

These low-oxygen zones occur naturally, but have grown by more than 4.5 million square kilometers -an area roughly as large as the entire European Union-just since the mid-20th century. In part that's because of rising temperatures.

Warm water simply carries less oxygen. It also stokes the metabolism of both microbes and larger creatures, causing them to use more of whatever oxygen there is. Finally, as climate change warms the ocean from the surface down, making the surface layer more buoyant-warm water is lighter than cold water-it makes it harder for fresh oxygen from the air to mix down into the deep layers where the oxygen-poor zones are located.

Today, those low-oxygen zones are expanding toward the surface by as much as a meter a year. That includes major areas in the eastern Pacific and Baltic Sea. One area down deep off southern California has seen an oxygen decline of 30 percent in just a quarter century. A low-oxygen area of the Atlantic Ocean near the coast of Africa is broader than the continental United States, and has grown 15 percent since the 1960s

In fact, the world's oceans have lost about two percent of their oxygen in just 50 years, while the amount of water that's completely free of oxygen has increased fourfold, according to the new study. Scientists now can identify 500 sites along the coasts where oxygen is exceedingly low. Fewer than 10 percent of those were known before the mid-20th century.

For some marine creatures, low oxygen waters can impair reproduction, shorten lifespans, and change behavior. Even brief exposure can change immune systems and increase disease. Low-oxygen waters can even affect future generations by altering gene expression in fish and other marine creatures.

The change is already forcing everything from tuna and sharks, to herring, shad, mackerel, Pacific cod, and swordfish into ever-smaller bands of oxygen-rich water near the surface. Concentrating all these creatures makes them easier pickings for turtles, birds, and other surface predators-including fishing fleets.

Breitburg's team also found that oxygen loss is affecting some of the world's most productive areas-"upwelling zones," such as the ones off the west coast of the U.S. and South America, where winds draw nutrient-rich cold water to the surface. Warming is expected to increase such upwelling, but increasingly it's bringing low-oxygen waters to the surface. In places such as central Oregon, that has helped create new dead zones.

Of course, declining oxygen isn't happening in isolation, Breitburg says. Warming itself threatens marine food webs, as does the acidification caused by increased carbon dioxide in the water. But the threats are worse when combined.

"We've been doing work in Chesapeake Bay and we've found that acidification actually makes some fish more sensitive to low oxygen," she says.

What's more, areas with extremely low oxygen also seem to produce their own greenhouse gas, which could further worsen climate change.

"There's potential for a feedback, where warming increases low-oxygen areas which produce nitrous oxide, which then causes more warming," Breitburg says. "That's a real concern."

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Climate Change Is Suffocating Large Parts of the Ocean

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One day more than a decade ago, Eric Prince was studying the tracks of tagged fish when he noticed something odd. Blue marlin off the southeastern United States would dive a half-mile deep chasing prey. The same species off Costa Rica and Guatemala stayed near the surface, rarely dropping more than a few hundred feet.

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this map shows how much impact humans have on climate change as well as how much damage humans are doing to the environment.

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This map shows the human influence on extreme weather

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Around two-thirds of extreme weather events studied in the past 20 years were made more likely or more severe by human-caused climate change.

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This article describes how and when certain invasive species arrived in certain areas and how they harm the environment.

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What's New | National Invasive Species Information Center

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Recent hurricanes may have spread non-native freshwater plants and animals into new water bodies, where some of them can disrupt living communities or change the landscape. To help land managers find and manage these flood-borne newcomers, scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey have created four online maps, one for each hurricane.

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this article disuses the threats invasive species have on native wildlife and how they have caused certain populations to become endangered. It goes deeper about how they are spread as well as what humans can do to keep out invasive species.

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"Invasive species"-they may not sound very threatening, but these invaders, large and small, have devastating effects on wildlife.

Invasive species are among the leading threats to native wildlife. Approximately 42 percent of threatened or endangered species are at risk due to invasive species.

Human health and economies are also at risk from invasive species. The impacts of invasive species on our natural ecosystems and economy cost billions of dollars each year. Many of our commercial, agricultural, and recreational activities depend on healthy native ecosystems.

What Makes a Species "Invasive"?

An invasive species can be any kind of living organism-an amphibian (like the cane toad), plant, insect, fish, fungus, bacteria, or even an organism's seeds or eggs-that is not native to an ecosystem and causes harm. They can harm the environment, the economy, or even human health. Species that grow and reproduce quickly, and spread aggressively, with potential to cause harm, are given the label "invasive."

An invasive species does not have to come from another country. For example, lake trout are native to the Great Lakes, but are considered to be an invasive species in Yellowstone Lake in Wyoming because they compete with native cutthroat trout for habitat.

How Invasive Species Spread

Invasive species are primarily spread by human activities, often unintentionally. People, and the goods we use, travel around the world very quickly, and they often carry uninvited species with them. Ships can carry aquatic organisms in theirballast water, while smaller boats may carry them on their propellers. Insects can get into wood, shipping palettes, and crates that are shipped around the world. Some ornamental plants can escape into the wild and become invasive. And some invasive species are intentionally or accidentally released pets. For example, Burmese pythons are becoming a big problem in the Everglades.

In addition, higher average temperatures and changes in rain and snow patterns caused by climate change will enable some invasive plant species-such as garlic mustard, kudzu, and purple loosestrife-to move into new areas. Insect pest infestations will be more severe as pests such as mountain pine beetle are able to take advantage of drought-weakened plants.

Threats to Native Wildlife

Invasive species cause harm to wildlife in many ways. When a new and aggressive species is introduced into an ecosystem, it may not have any natural predators or controls. It can breed and spread quickly, taking over an area. Native wildlife may not have evolved defenses against the invader, or they may not be able to compete with a species that has no predators.

The direct threats of invasive species include preying on native species, outcompeting native species for food or other resources, causing or carrying disease, and preventing native species from reproducing or killing a native species' young.

There are indirect threats of invasive species as well. Invasive species can change the food web in an ecosystem by destroying or replacing native food sources. The invasive species may provide little to no food value for wildlife. Invasive species can also alter the abundance or diversity of species that are important habitat for native wildlife. Aggressive plant species like kudzu can quickly replace a diverse ecosystem with a monoculture of just kudzu. Additionally, some invasive species are capable of changing the conditions in an ecosystem, such as changing soil chemistry or the intensity of wildfires.

Examples of Invasive Species

Cogongrass is an Asian plant that arrived in the United States as seeds in packing material. It is now spreading through the Southeast, displacing native plants. It provides no food value for native wildlife, and increases the threat of wildfire as it burns hotter and faster than native grasses.

Feral pigs will eat almost anything, including native birds. They compete with native wildlife for food sources such as acorns. Feral pigs spread diseases, such as brucellosis, to people and livestock. E. coli from their feces was implicated in the E. coli contamination of baby spinach in 2006.

European green crabs found their way into the San Francisco Bay area in 1989. They outcompete native species for food and habitat and eat huge quantities of native shellfish, threatening commercial fisheries.

Dutch elm disease (caused by the fungus Ophiostoma ulmi) is transmitted to trees by elm bark beetles. Since 1930, the disease has spread from Ohio through most of the country, killing over half of the elm trees in the northern United States.

Water hyacinth is a beautiful aquatic plant, introduced to the U.S. from South America as an ornamental. In the wild, it forms dense mats, reducing sunlight for submerged plants and aquatic organisms, crowding out native aquatic plants, and clogging waterways and intake pipes.

Curbing the Spread

One way to curb the spread of invasive species is to plant native plants and remove any invasive plants in your garden. There are many good native plant alternatives to common exotic ornamental plants. In addition, learn to identify invasive species in your area, and report any sightings to your county extension agent or local land manager.

Regularly clean your boots, gear, boat, tires, and any other equipment you use outdoors to remove insects and plant parts that may spread invasive species to new places. When camping, buy firewood near your campsite (within 30 miles) instead of bringing your own from home, and leave any extra for the next campers. Invertebrates and plants can easily hitch a ride on firewood you haul to or from a campsite-you could inadvertently introduce an invasive to a new area.

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Invasive Species | National Wildlife Federation

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Invasive species are among the leading threats to native wildlife. Learn about how they spread and how they threaten native wildlife in the United States.

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This article talks about lady bugs and how they prey on aphids but how the aphid is an important asset to the the lady bugs survival not just by providing food but by warding off other predators.

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An Asian lady beetle larva, bottom, eating the head of a seven-spotted lady beetle larva. A type of toxic aphid was found to limit the population of the Asian lady beetles. Credit Paul Lenhart

Aphids are a familiar sight in the garden, sucking the juices out of your rose bushes. Luckily, so are ladybugs, which prey on aphids and keep them in check.

But the relationship between predator and prey is more complex than you might think. Aphids may be important to the survival of some ladybug species we have come to know and love by warding off another predator that has been moving in and feasting on them.

The arrival about 30 years ago in the United States of the multicolored Asian lady beetle, or Harmonia axyridis, which gleefully devours other ladybugs' larvae, led to a drop in numbers of the seven-spotted lady beetle. Although the seven-spotted beetle is also an invasive species, it has been around longer than the Asian lady beetle, and exists alongside native ladybug species, which also take a beating.

However, some aphids contain a substance that's much more toxic to this aggressive invaderthan to the other ladybugs. As a result, researchers show in a paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, these aphids may provide refuge to the other ladybug species by killing off their common enemy.

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The aphids in the study, which are themselves invasive, are all from the same species and all look exactly the same. But some are toxic to the Asian lady beetle and others are not. Although researchers still don't know what the toxic substance is, whether aphids have it or not seems to depend on what plants they've been eating, as well as their parentage, says Paul Lenhart, an entomology researcher at the University of Kentucky.

On plants with toxic aphids that were harmful to the Asian lady beetles, there were not only more aphids, but other ladybug species were present in greater numbers. Credit Paul Lenhart

Dr. Lenhart's team studied the aphids and ladybugs in the laboratory as well as in a more realistic setting. In a field they put both toxic and nontoxic aphids on plants, and also added Asian lady beetlelarvae to some to see what would occur over the course of ten days. In the final reckoning, nontoxic aphids fared very poorly when the Asian lady beetleswere around, as did other ladybugs. But on plants with toxic aphids, there were not only more aphids, but other ladybug species were present in greater numbers.

"It's kind of a refuge where there's no Harmonia that's going to eat them," Dr. Lenhart said.

This suggests that there may be ways for prey to protect predators that are less damaging than the alternative. That may help explain why some native ladybug species have held on despite having many invasive species to compete with.

"They've declined, but they're still around," said Dr. Lenhart. "So there are probably very subtle ways that predators divide up food resources."

Previous reporting on ladybugs and other beetles

Lest you assume that this is a cooperative relationship built over eons of evolution, remember that many of these species are from different parts of the world, and only began to co-habitate recently. While native ladybugs and other insects made appearances in the field experiment, many of the interactions here are relatively new. That makes it all the more fascinating to see what kind of détente has developed among these species.

"This is a hodgepodge of native and invasive species, which is becoming more and more common," said Dr. Lenhart. "These aren't natural systems, but these are the systems we have to deal with now."

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Ladybugs, Aphids and the Toxic Combat That Might Be Happening in Your Garden

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Aphids are a familiar sight in the garden, sucking the juices out of your rose bushes. Luckily, so are ladybugs, which prey on aphids and keep them in check. But the relationship between predator and prey is more complex than you might think.

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This article is a list of the endangered species.

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Species List | Endangered, Vulnerable, and Threatened Animals | WWF

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WWF is committed to saving endangered species. Learn more about the species we are working to protecting from becoming endangered or extinct.

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This article talks about how may species are endangered and that we can't save every species we have to think about what species to save.

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This article talks about the last male Northern White Rhino that passed away recently causing the race to decrease in population.

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For nearly a decade, Sudan lived in a 700-acre enclosure at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, against the backdrop of the hulking Mount Kenya.

Armed guards protected him 24 hours a day because he belonged to a subspecies on the verge of extinction from poachers. Rhinos are targeted by poachers fueled by the belief in Asia that the horns cure various ailments.

The need to preserve the northern white rhino is dire -- there are no known animals left in the wild.

Old and frail

At 45, Sudan was elderly in rhino years. His daughter Najin, 28, and granddaughter, Fatu, 17, are considered spring chickens.

The elderly rhino was fraught with problems normally associated with age. During his final years, he was not able to naturally mount a female and suffered from a low sperm count, which made his ability to procreate difficult.

Najin could conceive, but her hind legs are so weak, she may be unable to support a mounted male.

"There has been recorded mating between different pairs over the last few years, but not conceptions," George Paul, the deputy veterinarian at the conservancy, said. "Based on a recent health examination conducted, both animals have a regular estrus cycle, but no conception has been recorded."

And if one is not recorded soon, the beloved animal will go extinct.

Alternative methods to conceive

In a race against time, international experts are resorting to science to try to sustain the subspecies.

The northern white rhino cannot mate with a black rhino, but there is a chance it could mate with a southern white rhino, Paul said. While southern white rhinos are not endangered -- Ol Pejeta has 19 -- they are a different subspecies from the northern white rhino genetically. Though the offspring would not be 100% northern white rhino, it would be better than nothing, experts say.

A committee at the conservancy is also looking at various alternative reproduction techniques, including in vitro fertilization.

"In other countries, success has been achieved with embryo transfer in a different rhino species, thus that, as a technique, can be presupposed to be the most promising," Paul said. "However, consultations are ongoing amongst different reproductive technique experts on the way forward."

Researchers were able to save some of Sudan's genetic material in the hopes of successfully artificially inseminating one of the two females left, said Elodie Sampere, a representative for Ol Pejeta.

They are also retrieving and storing eggs from southern white rhino females in European zoos, and fertilizing them in in vitro conditions, Sampere said. Experts will also retrieve eggs from the last two northern white rhino females in Kenya.

"The plan is now to isolate the potential southern white rhino female surrogates from any males, ensuring they are 'empty' and ready for receiving a northern white rhino embryo in 2018," Sampere said.

Countdown to extinction

Paul said he's optimistic.

"Realistically, we are looking at these animals dying in the next decade or so. But hopefully, using artificial methods of reproduction, we might be able to bring them back in the future," he said. "This might mean that it will happen when the current animals are already deceased, but it could happen."

The conservancy acquired the northern white rhinos -- two males and two females -- in 2009 from a zoo in the Czech Republic. Suni, the other male northern white rhino at the conservancy, died last year.

It's now up to Najin and Fatu to help keep the subspecies alive.

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the world's last male northern white rhino is dead. now what?  - cnn

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The world's last male northern white rhino is dead. Now what?

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For nearly a decade, Sudan lived in a 700-acre enclosure at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, against the backdrop of the hulking Mount Kenya. Armed guards protected him 24 hours a day because he belonged to a subspecies on the verge of extinction from poachers.

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The world's last male northern white rhino is dead. Now what?
The world's last male northern white rhino is dead. Now what?
For nearly a decade, Sudan lived in a 700-acre enclosure at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, against the backdrop of the hulking Mount Kenya. Armed guards protected him 24 hours a day because he belonged to a subspecies on the verge of extinction from poachers.
cnn
 add

# data[].attributes.body
The world's last male northern white rhino is dead. Now what?
The world's last male northern white rhino is dead. Now what?
For nearly a decade, Sudan lived in a 700-acre enclosure at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, against the backdrop of the hulking Mount Kenya. Armed guards protected him 24 hours a day because he belonged to a subspecies on the verge of extinction from poachers.
cnn
 
The world's last male northern white rhino is dead. Now what?
The world's last male northern white rhino is dead. Now what?
For nearly a decade, Sudan lived in a 700-acre enclosure at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, against the backdrop of the hulking Mount Kenya. Armed guards protected him 24 hours a day because he belonged to a subspecies on the verge of extinction from poachers.
cnn
 add
 add