# data[].attributes.headline
Illegal pet trade is the illegal capturing, transporting and selling of exotic animals.

# data[].attributes.subject
Illegal pet trade is the illegal capturing, transporting and selling of exotic animals.

# data[].attributes.body
- Illegal pet trade is unsustainable, harming wild populations of animals and plants and pushes endangered species toward extinction.
- Endangered animals and plants are often the target of wildlife crime because of their rarity and increased economic value.

# data[].attributes.headline
Invasive species are non-native to the ecosystem of discussion and causes economic and/or environmental harm.

# data[].attributes.subject
Invasive species are non-native to the ecosystem of discussion and causes economic and/or environmental harm.

# data[].attributes.body
Invasive species include plants and animals. Some are so prevalent, you don't realize that they are non-native.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
We have all seen some animals outside of their natural, original habitat, whether knowingly - the lions in British zoos are hardly native to the land, despite being the national animal - or unknowingly - you may not know this, but rats are not actually native to Europe! Some species have been introduced, intentionally or not, in habitats and lands where they do not belong, sometimes with disastrous consequences.

1. Burmese python

(Photo: Hannes Steyn / Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0)

Burmese pythons are, as their name suggests, native to Southern and South Eastern Asian tropical and subtropical regions. They were introduced into the wild in Florida by escaping households and zoos, possibly as a result of the 1992 Hurricane Andrew. Their importation into the United States is now banned as of 2012, but there are still over 300,000 pythons present in Southern Florida. They have few predators outside of humans and alligators - which they attack anyway - and prey on a large variety of species, threatening species like birds, coyotes and panthers.

Snakehead fish have been dubbed "fishzilla" by National Geographic, and with reason! These predators have everything to terrify: sharp teeth, a strong appetite, a significant size of over three feet long, and, most of all, the ability to breathe and move about on land for up to four days in search of more water points. These top-level predators originate from East Asian regions, and have been intentionally introduced in many regions, including Madagascar and Taiwan, often as a food source, where they have quickly reduced native species' populations.

3. Cane toad

(Photo: Greg Schechter / Flickr / CC BY 2.0)

The cane toad is native to South and Central America, and was introduced to non-native habitats as a means to control and fight pest infestations in regions such as Hawaii, the Philippines and the Caribbean. Its success at controlling pests caused its importation into other regions, such as Australia and the United States, where it unfortunately started preying on species other than pests. In Australia, certain lizards, snakes and crocodiles have been put at risk by this toad. The cane toad has a toxic skin and glands, and while it has a number of predators in its native habitat, it has fewer outside of its native range.

Common European rabbits are known for their ability to reproduce at an alarming rate and produce an incredibly high number of offspring. A farmer in Australia brought over 24 rabbits for hunting purposes, but these bred so much that 10 years later, two million rabbits could be removed annually from the environment without affecting the stability of the wild rabbit population. Rabbits are a significant factor in Australia's significant loss of species in the past few decades, and are also responsible for erosion of the top layer of soil, which can take hundreds of years to replace itself.

5. Nile perch

(Photo: Pavel Zuber / WikimediaCommons)

The Nile Perch is native to the African Afrotropic ecozone, and is one of the largest freshwater fish, reaching 2 meters (approx. 6.6 feet) in length and 200 kilograms (approx. 441 pounds) in weight. It is a fierce predator feeding on fish, including its own species. It was intentionally introduced into Lake Victoria in East Africa, as a source of food, in the 1950s. It has led to the loss of several hundred native species from that lake, and has had severe economic and social impacts - for example by abolishing many local trades relying on other fish species from the lake. Due to the high fat content, nile perches cannot be sun dried and need to be smoked for preservation, putting additional strain on regional forests, already subject to deforestation and soil erosion.

Black rats are so common and widespread that it is easy to forget they are originally native to tropical Asia. They spread to Europe and other regions of the world centuries ago, in a large part by boarding trading ships. They are major pests, and their introduction to a new habitat induces strong competition for resources with other animals, leading to the decline in population (and even extinction) of native species. They are also vectors for diseases affecting humans, such as certain agents of the bubonic plague.

7. Asian tiger mosquito

(Photo: Naturegirl78 / Flickr / CC BY 2.0)

Asian tiger mosquitoes originate, as the name suggests, from Asia, specifically tropical and subtropical South Eastern Asian regions. They are considered one of the 100 worst invasive species in the world, and have invaded 28 countries in the last decade alone. They have outcompeted other, native species - for example, the malaria and yellow fever mosquito in Calcutta - and have sometimes filled a previously empty niche with no native species to compete with - for example in Europe.

Whiteflies are small - about one millimeter (approx. 0.04 inches) long as adults - insects that feed on plants, specifically the underside of leaves. They are the cause of hundreds of millions of dollars of losses in terms of crop diseases they spread, as well as by directly eating plants. They have been found to feast on several hundred different types of plants worldwide. Silverleaf whiteflies are one particularly problematic species, originating from India, and somehow spread and adapted to more temperate climates - possibly through trade and spreading of decorative plants.

9. Asian longhorned beetle

(Photo: U.S. Department of Agriculture / Flickr / CC BY 2.0)

This species, native to Japan, Korea and China, have bodies roughly three centimeters (approx. 1.2 inches) long, with black and white striped antennae reaching up to 10 centimeters (approx. 3.9 inches). As larvae, they tunnel through sap and wood to feed, causing death by weakening structural integrity, encouraging fungal growth, and disrupting the tree's vascular system. These beetles unintentionally spread to other continents, including America and Europe, possibly through solid wood packaging materials. Altogether, the cost of these beetles and other wood-boring pests has been estimated to 3.5 billion dollars annually in the United States alone, in a large part due to the need to completely eradicate infestation by removing, chipping, and replacing affected trees.

Kudzu, also known as Japanese arrowroot, is a vine native to Eastern and SouthEastern Asia. They were introduced in the United States in 1876, for ornamental purposes derived from its purple flowers, and for soil erosion control. Unfortunately, this incredibly fast growing plant quickly became a pest, growing so fast that it would kill trees and shrubs by casting shadows over them.

By Marion Thibaudeau

Frontier is an international non-profit volunteering NGO. Frontier has over 300 dedicated conservation and community development projects as well as plenty of inspiring www.frontier.ac.uk/Volunteer/Volunteer.aspx?utm_source=TheDodo&utm_medium=gapyearblog&utm_campaign=BlogArticle">gap year ideas to help make your time out meaningful. For more information on all the opportunities available please visit www.frontier.ac.uk. Check out Frontier's blog " Into the Wild" where you can read more articles like this! Happy reading!

Get more from us on social media with Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

See more from volunteers on YouTube, Flickr and Instagram #FrontierVolunteer.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
10 Disastrous Consequences Of Humans Importing Invasive Species

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We have all seen some animals outside of their natural, original habitat, whether knowingly - the lions in British zoos are hardly native to the land, despite being the national animal - or unknowingly - you may not know this, but rats are not actually native to Europe!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
An invasive species is an introduced organism

that is not native to an area and causes ecological and/or economic damage in their new environment. While all invasive species are exotic species (non-native species that are introduced into a new area), many exotic species never become invasive species (for example, most of our vegetable plants that we cultivate in our gardens are essentially exotic species that never become invasive).

However, many exotics species have become invasive around the world, resulting in a great deal of environmental and economic damage.

How species typically become invasive?

An exotic species can become invasive when it is introduced into a new environment that exists in a climate that is very similar to where it is native. Because a potentially invasive organism is already so well-adapted to the climate of its new environment, it can then take advantage of available niches, where it reproduces, invades, and proliferates within local ecosystems because it now has no natural predators to limit its population levels.

Due to the increased levels of global economic trade activity and travel that is occurring around the world today between regions that were once isolated from one another in the past, there has been an increase in exotic species being introduced around the world.

These exotic species introductions can be intentional, such as the Purple Loosestrife in the United States, or unintentional, such as the Emerald Ash Borer in the United States and the Norway Rat throughout most of the world.

Sources of exotic species introductions include:

the ballast water of ships

the intentional and unintentional release of exotic species into the environment by the public

the pet trade

the horticultural industry

the aquaculture industry

Why are invasive species a problem?

With no natural predators, invasive species can proliferate and cause a lot of ecological and economic damage where they have invaded.

Invasive species can outcompete native species, kill native plants and trees, destroy habitat, and over-predate native species within a particular area, potentially throwing an entire ecosystem out of balance. Invasive species can threaten the biodiversity of an ecosystem, especially if native species are outcompeted or entirely driven to extinction.

Invasive species can also inflict a great deal of economic damage to local communities in their new environments, such as by decimating local native fish populations and destroying local fisheries, killing economically important tree species for the forestry industry, and causing great damage to crops [1].

When ecosystems are negatively impacted by invasive species, tourism may also suffer, such as the invasive aquatic species [2] that threaten the health and vitality of the Great Lake region in the United States.

Invasive species can be particularly destructive on islands, where they can outcompete or over-predate the unique native species that are found nowhere else on Earth. If native island species are decimated, they likely have no other populations that can repopulate the island, potentially driving the entire native species population to extinction.

An example of this is when the Brown Tree Snake ( Boiga irregularis) was introduced by accident in Guam by US. military ships after World War II. The Brown Tree Snake reproduced and took over the entire island, over-predating the island's native birds and lizards [3].

As our global natural environment continues to undergo damage and development around the world, the disturbed and deteriorating ecosystems are now becoming increasingly vulnerable to invasion by invasive species. In disturbed ecosystems, introduced invasive species can take advantage of niches that have been opened up that were previously occupied by native species.

Examples of invasive species

Examples of invasive species that have become problematic in certain regions of the world include:

References

[1] http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/27979/1/03020001.pdf
[2] http://goo.gl/c6ssrK
[3] http://www.britannica.com/animal/brown-tree-snake

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Why Are Invasive Species a Problem? | Greentumble

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Invasive alien species pose greater risks than previously thought for biodiversity, human health and economy. The problem is that they take advantage of available...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Invasive species threat growing globally, experts warn

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Threat to native species from alien invaders is growing and posing one of the greatest threats to wildlife around the world, conservationists say

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Written by Maria Magher

A healthy ecosystem lives in a state of balance. Plants and animals create a cycle of life in which, even when predators take away some lives, all animals provide some benefit to the ecosystem as a whole. However, when some species are given the opportunity to proliferate and become invasive, they can threaten the health of another species or even the ecosystem as a whole. Typically, species become invasive when they are introduced into a new environment.

What Makes an Invasive Species

A species is considered invasive when it is introduced into a non-native habitat and becomes harmful to another species in the new environment. Species that have the ability to reproduce rapidly are the most likely to become invasive, such as bacteria or some varieties of fish, like carp. Outside of their natural environment and with fewer predators (if any), an invasive species can consume the natural resources, such as a water or food supply, or they can make other animals or people very ill. Invasive organisms can change the entire food supply or the ecosystem itself, reducing or eliminating the diversity that is crucial to the health of other organisms.

Organisms that are Endangered

Many species have become extinct or are endangered as a result of invasive species. The zebra mussel, which is native to the Black and Caspian seas, has spread in the Great Lakes and in rivers and lakes throughout the Midwest and the South. It has endangered at least 30 freshwater muscle species, including the Higgins Eye Pearlymussel. The Brown Tree Snake was introduced to Guam from the Admiralty Islands and has endangered many of the bird species on the island, including the white-throated ground-dove, Cardinal honeyeater and Bridled white-eye. The Nile Perch has decimated many species of fish in Lake Victoria, and some endangered species include Synodontis afrofischeri, known as Fischer's Victoria Squeaker; Synodontis victoriae, known as Lake Victoria Squeaker; and Xenoclarias eupogon, known as Lake Victoria Deepwater Catfish.

Consequences of Invasive Species

In addition to endangering other species of plants and animals, invasive species can have significant environmental and financial impact. For example, the Nile Perch in Lake Victoria has provided some fishermen with increased revenues because of its vast size, but it has wiped out other fish populations, undermining the fishing industry as a whole in the region. The zebra mussel has overgrown on pipes, ships and other machinery, causing vast financial damages.

What Can be Done

Most species become invasive as a result of being introduced into a new environment. One of the best solutions is to prevent the introduction of a species to a non-native habitat, such as by only choosing native plants or controlling imports and exports. Eradication may be difficult once a species begins to spread, but some methods that may help include the use of pesticides and physical removal, such as through capture of wildlife or cutting down trees and plants.

About the Author

Maria Magher has been working as a professional writer since 2001. She has worked as an ESL teacher, a freshman composition teacher and an education reporter, writing for regional newspapers and online publications. She has written about parenting for Pampers and other websites. She has a Master's degree in English and creative writing.

Photo Credits

Tom Brakefield/Stockbyte/Getty Images

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Examples of Organisms Endangered Due to Invasive Species

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A healthy ecosystem lives in a state of balance. Plants and animals create a cycle of life in which, even when predators take away some lives, all animals provide some benefit to the ecosystem as a whole. However, when some species are given the opportunity to proliferate and become invasive, they can threaten the ...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Invasive species are animals, insects, plants, or diseases that rapidly take over and have the potential to harm existing ecosystems, human economy, and even human health. These species are usually, but not always, non-native to the area. They disrupt by dominating a region's wilderness area or habitat.

Tennessee is home to several invasive pests threatening the local habitat. The following are the top ten invasive insect species to watch out for.

Southern Pine Beetle

The southern pine beetle is native to the United States but becomes destructive and widespread in forests when populations peak. They are attracted to stressed trees and can kill individual or large-scale trees. They cause structural damage from beetle behavior and by introducing the blue stain fungus .

Gypsy Moth

The gypsy moth is native to Asia, Europe, and North Africa and was first introduced to the U.S. in 1869. These moths became established in the northeast and are spreading toward Tennessee at a rate of seven miles per year. Gypsy moths are major defoliators of several hardwood species which poses a significant threat to Tennessee forests. Treatment and trapping programs have been in place since the 1970s to prevent them from becoming established in Tennessee.

Walnut Twig Beetle

The walnut twig beetle is native to the western United States and was found in Tennessee in 2010. These beetles tunnel through the bark and carry the thousand cankers disease . Once trees decline, they typically die within 2-3 years.

Emerald Ash Borer Beetle

Adult beetles are metallic green and about ½" long. This invasive species is from Asia and was first found in southeastern Michigan 15-20 years ago. It has since spread to 15 states, including Tennessee in 2010, and parts of Canada. The adult beetles eat ash foliage which causes little damage, but the larvae feed on the inner bark of ash trees. Once a tree is infested, they typically die within three years.

Africanized Honey Bee

Africanized honey bees, often referred to as killer bees, are aggressive and accustomed to wet and dry seasons in tropical or subtropical habitats. You'll find their nests in hollow trees, rotten logs, and wood or rock piles. They defend their nests up to 50 feet away by stinging and chasing intruders up to a mile. They've killed pets, livestock, and even people when they are unable to get away.

Brown Marmorated Stink Bug

The brown marmorated stink bug emits a bad odor when disturbed. Adult bugs are about ½" and have a mottled appearance. A range of crops and fruit are at risk with an infestation as the adults and nymphs feed on leaves causing damage. In the fall, adult stink bugs enter homes and outbuildings searching for shelter to overwinter. Many enter homes through small openings around windows.

Leek Moth

The leek moth is a serious pest that causes damage to leeks and onions. Female moths lay their eggs on the lower leaf surface near the base of the plant. In the spring, their eggs hatch within 4-6 days or 8-11 days in the fall. Larvae feed on the plants leaving pinholes in leaves and making the leeks unfit for sale. Leek moth damage makes onions age too quickly leaving damaged bulbs rejected for selling.

Pink Hibiscus Mealybug

This is a serious pest causing damage to many plants including hibiscus, grapevines, cotton, and peanuts. They originated in southeast Asia, northern Australia, and Africa, but were discovered in Florida in 2002 and continued to spread. Adult mealybugs are about 3 mm long, are pink in color, and covered with a waxy secretion. Eggs can be found in bark crevices, under bark, in the soil, tree boles, inside fruit clusters, and more. Nymphs disperse by the wind and by walking far distances to find preferred host plants. Mealybugs can stunt plant growth or kill the plant altogether.

Small Hive Beetle

The small hive beetle was first found in Florida in 1998. They have been detected in west and middle Tennessee and continue to spread. They can be very destructive to honey bee colonies by causing damage to honeycomb. Beetle larvae tunnel through honeycomb feeding, defecating, and causing fermentation and discoloration of the honey. If a beetle infestation grows, honey bees may abandon their hives.

Asian Longhorned Beetle

The Asian longhorned beetle is native to China and Korea, but infestations have been found around the U.S. This beetle slowly kills trees over 3-5 years. They invade locally by containers, pallets, infested firewood, and more.

At Inman-Murphy Termite & Pest Control, we eliminate unwanted pests and infestations from homes and businesses. If you're experiencing pest issues in Tennessee, contact us today .

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Top 10 Tennessee Invasive Species | Get Rid of The Worst Insects in Memphis

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Tennessee is home to several invasive pests threatening the local habitat. Here's our list of the worst invasive species here in Tennessee. Inman-Murphy Termite & Pest Control can eliminate unwanted pests and infestations from homes and businesses. Contact 901-388-0852 for expert pest control in Memphis.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Invasive Species and Biodiversity - Conservation Halton

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Conservation Halton is a community based environmental agency that protects local ecosystems in partnership with its watershed municipalities

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Invasive pine trees in the Western Cape have affected lizards causing their numbers to drop significantly. Author supplied

This article is the fifth in a series The Conversation Africa is running on invasive species.
Most people would agree that invasive plants are unwanted. Invasive plants are plants that are intentionally or accidentally introduced by humans into areas outside of their natural habitat. These species can spread rapidly with negative consequences for native species.

Invasive plant species have an impact on the diversity of local species, they affect water availability and damage the quality of soil nutrients. Once an alien plant has invaded a habitat, it changes the conditions of that environment. It does so by changing the light, solar radiation and temperature levels in the invaded patches. The quality and availability of food, shelter, nest sites, basking sites and perches are changed for a number of animals.

They can also inflict big changes on native vegetation, altering the frequency of fires, nutrient cycling, water availability and soil erosion. For example, pine trees in the Western Cape Province of South Africa have spread beyond forestry plantations and invaded native fynbos habitat. In these invaded landscapes, the temperatures available to lizards for functioning optimally are generally cooler and the number of lizard species greatly reduced.

In a few cases, some benefits of alien plants have been reported. For example, they can provide fire wood for local communities or add resources for animal species. But these benefits typically do not surpass the negative effects. Invasive plants have an impact on native species through complex interactions and processes. Unless these factors are properly understood, it is difficult to predict what sort of impact invasive plants will have.

How much is known about these processes in South African habitats, where invasive alien plants are a key concern? To find the answer, we read all the studies on the impact of alien plant on animals that we could find from South Africa and presented these findings in a recent study. We focused on ectothermic animals (reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates), known as "cold blooded". They require heat exchange from the environment to function, grow and reproduce. These animals typically move smaller distances than mammals or birds, which increase their vulnerability to alien plant invasions.

Shutterstock

A South African perspective

Habitats that have invasive plants in South Africa have a poorer diversity of animal species than whole native habitats. There are multiple reasons for this poorer animal diversity, like reduced availability of food resources or thermal conditions that are essential for animal survival. These effects can also occur in tandem or accumulate in time and space. This echoes similar findings in other regions of the world. There are however many gaps.

Existing studies focus on a few areas of South Africa and look at a small number of alien plants including Acacia, Hakea and Pinus species. Most studies examine the impact of alien plants on invertebrates, especially insects, but we have little data of how they impact reptiles and amphibians. South Africa is unique in its numbers of endemic tortoises, lizards, snakes and amphibians. But there are not many studies that address these species.

A nice example of how alien plants impact native animals comes from a study in Lake St. Lucia, on the eastern part of South Africa. Alien vegetation has shaded Nile crocodile nests. Since being invaded, nests are much cooler than normal sunny nests which female crocodiles prefer. Temperature dictates the sex of embryos in reptiles, so this finding implies that development of eggs under these conditions will result in more females. These nest temperature changes could therefore affect the population's demographics in the long-term and alter higher levels of organisation, like communities and species. So, invasive plant species might affect the environment in more ways than we can imagine.

The Nile crocodile study and a few other studies in South Africa are the exception rather than the rule. Most attention to date has gone into comparing numbers of species or individuals between native and invaded areas rather than investigating how these changes take place. Most authors report about the potential impact invasive plants have but very few actually test potential causes of these impacts.

This gap is possibly because of the difficulty to experimentally test the ways these impacts develop or record data in the long-term. For example, monitoring and collecting data on native species in the long run would enable comparing processes before and after an alien plant invasion has taken place.

Where to now?

Without understanding what causes the potential impact these aliens plants can have, we cannot project the impact of introduced alien species into new regions or into the future. Management practices need to be shaped by the knowledge of these causes. Scientists and citizens can keep a fairly good record of newly introduced invasive plant species and the spread of established ones.

It becomes a huge challenge to keep comprehensive records of the ways alien plants affect local plants and animals. This difficulty is mostly because these processes are often multiple and can change across time and geographic regions.

So, we face a challenge to capture these processes. But in an era of big data, data sharing, cross-country collaborations and public participation, it is a task that can be handled.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Invasive plants have a much bigger impact than we imagine

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Invasive plants have an impact on native species and unless these factors are properly understood, it is difficult to predict what sort of impact invasive plants will have.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A wildlife trader cuts the canines of a slow loris with a nail clipper so the animal, which was taken from a forest, will not be able to bite in self-defense. Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

People often do the wrong things for the right reasons. They may seek the companionship of pets, yet rather than settle for domesticated animals like cats and dogs, they may decide to own members of more exotic species -especially "cute" creatures like slow lorises and binturongs. Wishing to have pets may well be a good thing; opting for exotic pets almost never is.

Even with the best of intentions, most owners of exotic pets simply cannot provide adequate environmental enrichment for captive wild animals that are unsuited for being pets. Arboreal creatures like gibbons that love to roam far and wide in forest canopies end up being confined to small cages. Nocturnal animals like slow lorises and sugar gliders that come truly alive only at night are petted all day long and carried around in bags as if they were inanimate toys. Winged birds like hornbills that love to take to the skies in the wild wind up spending all their time tethered to a post.

Routinely, wild animals owned as pets are also reduced to surviving on inadequate or substandard diets. Insectivores like lorises are often fed only fruit and cereals, or even worse, sugary treats that rot their teeth and damage their health. Many exotic pets slowly waste away or die of preventable diseases. Many others are abandoned to their fate in a nearby forest or dumped at animal shelters after their owners tire of them, since exotic animals rarely make good pets.

Then again, many animals poached from forests never even make it to illegal exotic pet markets in the first place. That's because their captors frequently treat them with callous brutality, handling them roughly, squeezing into small hidden recesses, leaving them to starve, and even clipping their canines so they wouldn't bite or taping their beaks shut so they wouldn't make a noise.

And the exotic pet trade endangers the well-being of not only individual animals held in captivity but of their entire species in the wild as well. Poachers habitually scour Malaysia's forests in search of animals that can be sold as pets, thereby decimating wild populations. Often, young animals are taken from their mothers, which are killed and either sold as body parts for traditional medicine or left behind in the forest. A heartbreaking practice? You bet. And by further reducing the numbers of already endangered animals, it also whittles down a threatened species' long-term viability year by year by year.

Meanwhile, exotic pets, from snakes to captive-bred Bengal cats, that are released into the wild may end up wreaking havoc on native species by either preying on them or else spreading new diseases to them. "Any released or escaped introduced species will compete with native species for food and territory and cause an imbalance in the local ecology," explains Wong Ee Lynn, of the Malaysian Nature Society.

The wildlife trade, both the legal and illegal variety, is hugely lucrative. The legal wildlife trade is estimated to be worth $183 billion globally, while the illegal wildlife trade is worth somewhere between $7 and 23 billion, making it the third largest illegal trade by dollar value after drugs and guns. "Wildlife crime is a big business," explains the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) on its website. "Run by dangerous international networks, wildlife and animal parts are trafficked much like illegal drugs and arms. By its very nature, it is almost impossible to obtain reliable figures for the value of illegal wildlife trade."

And Malaysia is a regional hub of it, with the country serving as one of the biggest exporters of wild animals in the world. Most of them are snatched directly from their natural habitats, despite harsh penalties for illegal wildlife trafficking, thereby robbing the nation's forests of their unique wildlife and further driving endangered species to the brink of extinction.

"[The trade] goes on in silent in the black market unbeknownst to most people," observes Suwanna Gauntlett, a world-renowned environmentalist who is president of the international conservationist group Wildlife Alliance. "It is also known as a very innocent activity with consumers who keep exotic pets at home, but most often than not, those pets are taken from the wild," she adds.

That is why we would be wrong to blame only criminal syndicates for the plight of exotic pets and their beleaguered species. These syndicates do not operate in a vacuum; rather, they cater to growing demand for exotic pets among members of the general public. TRAFFIC, an international wildlife trade-monitoring watchdog, has recently found that social media in Malaysia are hotbeds for the illegal exotic pet trade.

"Just half an hour's daily monitoring over five months by TRAFFIC researchers of 14 Facebook Groups in Peninsular Malaysia found more than 300 apparently wild, live animals for sale as pets, ranging from Sun Bears ( Helarctos malayanus) and gibbons, to otters and even Binturong ( Arctictis binturong)," TRAFFIC noted. More than 60% of the 80 species offered on Facebook for sale, the watchdog added, were from around the country during the period it surveyed.

Needless to say, one more exotic pet in captivity is one less wild animal in the country's forests. At this rate, the country's exotic wildlife, once a pride of the nation, will soon be no more. The country is facing a do-or-die moment in conservation and wildlife protection, as local environmentalists have long been warning. Only as few as 250 tigers, for instance, are left in the wild across Malaysia, a country that proudly sports the majestic predators on its coat of arms.

Globally too, the situation is bleak. Over the past 40 years alone, an estimated 52% of the planet's wildlife have been wiped out, even as the world's human population has nearly doubled over the same time period. The extinction rate of animals across the globe is a shocking 1,000 times higher than normal in what scientists have dubbed the "Sixth Extinction" of mass species deaths (or "defaunation") in the planet's history. In a shocking bit of statistics, there are more tigers kept in the United States as pets (5,000) than there are tigers left in the wild around the entire planet (around 3,000). Meanwhile, some 28,300 freshwater turtles are traded every single day around the world (mostly as food and as pets), even as 80% of Asia's freshwater turtle species are in danger of extinction.

So what to do? Bury our heads in our hands in desperation? That won't do. For starters, we can all stop buying exotic animals for pets, no matter how "cute" or beautiful or exciting they may be. "The best thing is not to buy [mammals,] snakes, reptiles or birds from the pet stores. Just don't buy them," Gauntlett counsels Malaysians. Wong Ee Lynn concurs. "The only true way to show love and admiration for a particular species," the conservationist stresses, "is to protect its habitat and wild population, and observe it in its natural environment." Amen to that!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
We Must Stop the Exotic Pet Trade ... and You Can Do Your Part - Clean Malaysia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
People often do the wrong things for the right reasons. They may seek the companionship of pets, yet rather than settle for domesticated animals like cats and dogs, they may decide to own members of more exotic species -especially "cute" creatures like slow lorises and binturongs. Wishing to have pets...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Vigilance is needed to eradicate illegal wildlife trade from our ports and communities

There are about 50 social media accounts trading in animals such as cheetah cubs in the UAE, animal welfare groups say. Sammy Dallal / The National

O utside a zoo, it should be nigh-on impossible to sight the sleek silhouette of a panther or the flick of a lemur's tail in the Middle East. Those thrilling sightings belong firmly in the wild or on a safari.

Yet as reported yesterday, The National border officials are seizing growing numbers of exotic animals as they step up the battle against traffickers. Despite stringent laws banning the sale of rare and endangered species as pets, many still hawk them.

After being bought, some creatures have subsequently escaped; footage of lions and cheetahs roaming residential areas inevitably go viral. But this is no trivial matter. Being kept as pets is stressful and potentially life-threatening for creatures which are used to the wild. Snatched from the freedom of their natural habitats, they can become anxious, sick or even violent, lashing out under duress.

Worldwide, the industry is worth up to $25 billion and is second only to drugs as an illegal trade. In 2010, Al Ain Zoo took in five young cheetahs discovered in a shipment at Dubai international airport; another 10 had tragically died in transit.

Wild animals do not adapt well to captivity because they require specific care, sustenance and climate control, which only zoos and licensed facilities are fit to provide. Quite apart from the health and safety risks to owners, keeping such creatures in captivity constitutes animal cruelty. In addition, the illicit trade feeds criminal networks in the UAE and across the globe. It is vital for authorities to enforce the law, be on maximum alert for misdemeanours and spread awareness of this issue.

That begins at airports and ports, where exotic animals are often found smuggled in suitcases or custom-made items of clothing, and ends with owners, who imperil their communities, the animals and themselves. The battle to combat the trade in rare animal products, like rhino horns and ivory, is more complex but no less sinister.

While they might make an impressive trophy, there is no justification for the cruelty of taking wildlife out of its natural habitat.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Selling illegal exotic pets endangers them and us

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Vigilance is needed to eradicate illegal wildlife trade from our ports and communities

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Fueled by millions of viewers and sharing youtube videos, the world fell in love with the slow loris. The animal became a popular exotic pet...despite being illegal.

In 2009, a YouTube video featuring a slow loris being tickled went viral. Then in 2012, another video featuring a slow loris eating a rice ball also went viral. Still in 2016, these videos get millions of viewers. While the videos educate individuals about the existence of this rare species, they also helped create an overwhelming demand for the animal as an exotic pet because the videos portray the exotic slow loris as a cute, funny companion.

Tragically, the increasing demand for exotic pets is exploiting animal species and viral videos like these (most likely inadvertently) support the illegal exotic pet trade. Snatching animals from the wild for illegal pet trade is a major threat to endangered species already at risk because of habitat loss and poaching. It threatens biodiversity and the wider environment. The Wildlife Conservation Society reports that the threat of wildlife species extinction is an immediate problem. Although illegal in most areas, the wildlife trade is valued between $5-10 billion USD annually, surpassed only by the illegal trading of drugs, arms, and humans!

At a glance, it seems harmless that the owner of the slow loris posted a video while tickling their furry friend or feeding the animal a rice ball, but these videos are more harrowing than happy.

Tickling for the slow loris is actually torturous and rice balls aren't the most nourishing food item for the exotic animal.

Slow Loris eating a Rice Ball - for video go to: http://t.co/oABBflGEIF pic.twitter.com/P9ySvg4G5k
- Funny Videos (@1funniestvideos) April 7, 2015

All eight species of slow lorises are threatened by exotic animal trade and the Javan slow loris species, is one of the 25 most endangered primates worldwide.

Japan most frequently takes part in the illegal trade of the slow lorises. The animals are often found cooped up in small cages, malnourished, and traumatized. While traveling to a trading destination, many lorises die because of overcrowding and lack of proper resources.

When a slow loris is prepared for pet trading, it's teeth are removed...without anesthesia (could you imagine?). In the video, the slow loris is not waving its arms in the air like it just doesn't care because it's ticklish, but rather the animal's response is a fearful posture, meant to protect itself by exposing the venomous gland stored inside its elbows. This is why a slow loris' teeth are removed, because exposure to a bite is poisonous, sometimes even deadly to humans.

Being a nocturnal animal, the exposure to bright lights and loud noises is traumatising making the slow loris unfit to be a domesticated pet. These moments cause deep stress for the vulnerable animal.

Adorable cute Slow Loris for Ya Friends - https://t.co/bINSkfa5vl https://t.co/0fiN1feAMK#Animals#Cute#Adorable pic.twitter.com/8Ok7VMTA6T
- Anthony Zheng Gao (@Yeahilike) April 9, 2016

In a time of social media stardom, videos go viral within months, days, or seconds of posting. Social media has not been around for long enough to look at the long term side effects it can have on vulnerable subjects like rare animals. The good news is, It's not too late to explore this subject area. Viral videos like the ones that introduce wild animals as pets or are kept in cruel captivity directly support the illegal trade of exotic animals and the malicious treatment of wildlife.

Is our video entertainment worth this kind of injustice?

These viral videos promote unfair treatment and injustice, but the truth can also go viral. It all begins with helping to change how you and others think about animal videos watched and shared on social media.

It's absolutely okay if you have laughed at a video like this in the past (I have), but the important part is that after you learned the truth you can change things! A great first step could be ask yourself these kinds of questions:

1. Where was the video recorded? The wild, a reputable sanctuary, or a scam-turary?

2. If it is a baby animal, where is its mother? Was the baby orphaned and are they being raised for release back into the wild?

3. What sort of behaviors are the animals exhibiting, could these behaviors be linked to mental distress or anxiety?

Learn more about slow lorises and a campaign fighting to end the unfair treatment towards them at: "Tickling is TORTURE".

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
When tickling becomes torture: illegal exotic animal trade

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This animal may be cute but being soon-to-be-endangered is not.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Have you ever wondered how those brightly colored tropical fish ended up in pet shops? With their gorgeous scales and unique traits, having a pet fish can seem like the perfect way to add some flair to your home. However, in spite of the vibrancy of these animals, there is an incredibly dark side to the pet fish industry.

The Truth About Tropical Fish

Around 80 percent of exotic fish imported to the U.S. are captured illicitly using the toxic compound, sodium cyanide. Fishermen spray this chemical on fish to stun them and once sprayed, the fish are momentarily unable to move and breathe, making them easy to catch. Sadly, not all fish pull through from the poisoning. Some die instantly while others perish a few hours later. Those that do survive this experience are packed up and shipped across the world for sale in stores. Not only is cyanide harmful to fish, but it also damages the surrounding environment. Many tropical fish live in coral reefs. When corals are exposed to cyanide it can have a toxic effect and cause bleaching and death. Additionally, if the toxin remains on the reef, it can impact other non-target fish who come into contact with it as well.

"A square meter of reef is destroyed for every live fish caught using cyanide," said biologist Sam Mamauag of the International Marinelife Alliance (IMA) in the Philippines. With the world's coral reef teetering on the edge of extinction, this is no small impact.

Over 20 million fish are caught every year fueling this $300 million industry. While this might yield great profits for the pet industry, it is devastating the world's oceans. The Banggai cardinalfish and many other species have become endangered thanks to consumer demand. And considering the fact that scientists have estimated that the oceans could be empty by 2048 due to the immense rate at which humans are taking marine species from the oceans, we can't help but wonder if it is really worth this just to have a bright fish in a tank.

Why is This Allowed?

In the countries where the majority of exotic fish are exported from - Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines - it is illegal to use cyanide to capture fish, however, that doesn't always prevent this practice from happening.

According to a report from World Resource Institute (WRI), "Despite the fact that cyanide fishing is nominally illegal in virtually all Indo-Pacific countries, the high premium paid for live reef fish, weak enforcement capacities, and frequent corruption have spread the use of the poison across the entire region-home to the vast majority of the planet's coral reefs."

WRI further found that as fish stocks in one country are depleted, the trade moves on to new frontiers. As a result, "cyanide fishing is now confirmed or suspected in countries stretching from the central Pacific to the shores of East Africa. Sadly, the most pristine reefs, far from the usual threats of sedimentation, coral mining, and coastal development, are the primary target for cyanide fishing operations."

The United States already has an appropriate law in store to combat this issue. The Lacey Act, as it's called, prohibits wildlife that has been caught illegally from entering the U.S. Even though it doesn't have jurisdiction over the Southeast Asia waters, the U.S. yields huge influence over this matter. With approximately 12.5 million tropical fish imported by the U.S. every year, its purchasing power isn't something fish merchants will ignore. Provided that the U.S. refuses to accept fish that have been poisoned with cyanide, there's a chance this barbaric method may cease. The only catch here is that while tests that could identify traces of cyanide on fish do exist, no U.S. agency has started to implement them.

Thankfully, the Center for Biological Diversity in collaboration with Humane Society of the United States, Humane Society International, and For the Fishes have filed a legal petition to the National Marine Fisheries Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection to adopt the Lacey Act authority to combat cyanide-caught fish by requiring testing of imported exotic fish.

What You Can Do

What can you do to help? Well, the best thing is to not buy a pet fish. By removing your dollars from this trade, you can help shut it down. When the buying stops so can the senseless killing. Share this article and encourage others to learn more about the impact of the pet fish they purchase.

You can also help by supporting the work of Center for Biological Diversity, Humane Society of the United States, Humane Society International, and For the Fishes. With combined governmental action and consumer-driven change, we can help shut down the illegal tropical fish trade for good.
Image source: Robert Young/Flickr

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How the Tropical Fish Pet Trade is Harming Animals and Endangering Coral Reefs - One Green Planet

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
With their gorgeous scales and unique traits, having a pet fish can seem like the perfect way to add some flair to your home. However, in spite of the vibrancy of these animals, there is an incredibly dark side to the pet fish industry.

# data[].attributes.headline
5 animals that are victims of the exotic pet trade

# data[].attributes.subject
5 animals that are victims of the exotic pet trade

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
5 Animals That are Victims of the Exotic Pet Trade - One Green Planet

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The wild at heart do not belong on strings attached to human hands. Owning your own bird, hedgehog, lizard or monkey might seem striking, it might even add a certain color to your personality; but, it is wrong and unfair to keep an exotic animal in your home.

# data[].attributes.headline
Environmental noise, or sound pollution, is the propagation of noise with harmful impact on the activity of human or animal life.

# data[].attributes.subject
Environmental noise, or sound pollution, is the propagation of noise with harmful impact on the activity of human or animal life.

# data[].attributes.body
The source of outdoor noise worldwide is mainly caused by machines, transport and transportation systems.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Noise emanating from passing ships may disturb animals such as killer whales and dolphins far more than previously thought, with new research showing that the animals' communication and ability to find prey could be hampered by the underwater din.

The low rumble of passing ships has long been connected to the disturbance of large whales. But US researchers have documented persistent noise also occurring at medium and higher frequencies, including at 20,000Hz where killer whales, also known as orcas, hear best.

These noise disturbances could be hindering the ability of killer whales to communicate and echolocate - the process of using sound to bounce off objects such as prey and identify where they are. Dolphins and porpoises, which also operate at higher frequencies, may be suffering the same problems.

The findings, published in PeerJ, suggest that the noise could well affect the endangered population of killer whales that are found near the shipping lanes. A population of just 84 killer whales forage up the US west coast and into Puget Sound.

"The main concern of this is that even a slight increase in sound may make echolocation more difficult for whales," said Scott Veirs of Beamreach, who led the research. "That's worrying because their prey, chinook salmon, is already quite scarce. Hearing a click off a salmon is probably one of the most challenging things a killer whale does. Hearing that subtle click is harder if there's a lot of noise around you."

The researchers used underwater microphones to measure the noise created by about 1,600 individual ships as they passed through Haro Strait, in Washington state. The two-year study captured the sound made by 12 different types of vessel, including cruise ships, container ships and military vehicles, that passed through the strait about 20 times a day.

Some ships are quieter than others but the average intensity of noise next to all the ships was 173 underwater decibels, equivalent to 111 decibels through the air - about the sound of a loud rock concert. Whales are not usually located right next to ships and so would be subjected to noise of about 60 to 90 decibels - around the level of a lawnmower or a vacuum cleaner.

Veirs said scientists have already identified the impact of underwater noise upon baleen whales - a class of fauna containing the largest animals on Earth. But the new research underlines the threat posed to smaller whales, dolphins and porpoises.

"Ships have been thought of as low-frequency sources of noise, like the rumbling of trucks or trains," he said. "Most noise is at that low frequency but the background noise of the ocean is raised even in the high frequencies. This could be causing a significant problem that we need to look into more."

There are several knock-on consequences of a noisy marine environment. Whales may have to group together more closely in order to hear each other. And should they fail to find prey as effectively, they will need to use up their stores of excess blubber. This is problematic as this blubber often contains manmade pollutants that are toxic to whales if released fully into their systems.

Veirs said more work needs to be done to identify how badly the noise is affecting whales and also to quieten the ships that pass near the cetaceans.

"It should be easy to reduce noise pollution," he said. "Military ships are quite a bit quieter and there could be straightforward ways of transferring that technology to the commercial fleet. Another way to reduce noise is to slow down. Decreasing speed by six knots could decrease noise intensity by half."

While the fortunes of some whale species, such as humpbacks and blue whales, have improved as whaling has declined, others are still under threat from a range of factors. Last week, the US federal government protected nearly 40,000 square miles of the Atlantic in an attempt to avoid losing the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale, a species with just 500 individuals left.

In Europe, killer whales are carrying dangerously high levels of banned PCB chemicals in their blubber. Scientists are still trying to determine whether pollutants caused the death of five sperm whales that became stranded on the east coast of Britain in January.

Meanwhile, around the coast of Australia, whales face an increased threat from ship strikes and oil and gas drilling, as well as Japan's recent pledge to resume whaling in Antarctic waters.
Topics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ships' noise is serious problem for killer whales and dolphins, report finds

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Noise emanating from passing ships may disturb animals such as killer whales and dolphins far more than previously thought, with new research showing that the animals' communication and ability to find prey could be hampered by the underwater din. The low rumble of passing ships has long been connected to the disturbance of large whales.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This western bluebird guards her clutch of eggs in a nesting box in a natural gas field. Unable to discern whether their environment is safe due to compressor noise, mother birds must choose between staying on guard and finding food for their young. Credit: Nathan Kleist

Birds exposed to the persistent noise of natural gas compressors show symptoms remarkably similar to those in humans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, new research shows.

In a study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers found that adults and nestlings of three species showed multiple signs of chronic stress caused by noise pollution, including skewed stress hormone levels, possibly due to increased anxiety, distraction and hypervigilance.

The study is the first to test the relationships between noise, stress hormones and fitness in animals that breed in natural areas with unrelenting, human-made noise.

Constant noise could be acting as an "acoustic blanket," muffling the audio cues birds rely on to detect predators, competitors and their own species, said study co-author Rob Guralnick, associate curator of biodiversity informatics at the Florida Museum of Natural History. Unable to discern whether their environment is safe, mother birds must choose between staying on guard at the nest and finding food for their young.

Nestlings in the noisiest environments had smaller body sizes and reduced feather development, potentially diminishing their odds of survival. Hatching rates in western bluebirds - the most noise-tolerant species studied - dropped in response to noise.

This western bluebird returns to its nestlings with food, as a natural gas compressor drones in the background. Researchers think this noise acts as an 'acoustic blanket,' muffling audio cues birds rely on to determine whether their surroundings are safe. Credit: Nathan Kleist

"These birds can't escape this noise. It's persistent, and it completely screws up their ability to get cues from the environment," Guralnick said. "They're perpetually stressed because they can't figure out what's going on. Just as constant stress tends to degrade many aspects of a person's health, this ultimately has a whole cascade of effects on their physiological health and fitness."

A research team led by Nathan Kleist, then a doctoral student at the University of Colorado Boulder, set up 240 nesting boxes staggered at precise distances from gas compressors. This allowed the researchers to examine stress responses of nesting birds across a measurable gradient of noise, Guralnick said.

The team tested levels of the stress hormone corticosterone in three species - western bluebirds, mountain bluebirds and ash-throated flycatchers. Expecting corticosterone levels to be high, the researchers found the opposite: The louder the noise from gas compressors, the lower the birds' baseline corticosterone levels. These results were consistent in adults and chicks across all three species.

While initially surprising, the findings came into focus when compared with lab studies of chronic stress. Low corticosterone can be a sign that stress is so intense, the body has dialed down the baseline levels of the hormone as a means of self-protection.

"On the surface, you might look at this result and assume this means they are not stressed," said Christopher Lowry, study co-author and stress physiologist at CU Boulder. "But what we are learning from both human and rodent research is that with inescapable stressors, including post-traumatic stress disorder in humans, stress hormones are often chronically low."

Researchers found that birds nesting in natural gas fields have symptoms similar to those in humans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. The constant noise drastically skews their stress hormone levels. Credit: Nathan Kleist

When testing chicks' response to a sudden threat, researchers found that the birds' corticosterone skyrocketed compared with typical high-stress levels and was slow to return to baseline levels. The link between low baseline corticosterone levels and abnormal spikes in acute stressor-triggered corticosterone also parallels previous chronic stress studies on human and rodents, Guralnick said.

"This is a neat alignment between two entirely different types of literature - studies about stress and studies about conservation and physiology," he said. "The connection between these low and high hormone levels helps explain why data on corticosterone from previous conservation physiology studies seemed to be all over the place. This helps illuminate the underlying pattern and suggests a new paradigm for how noise affects wildlife."Noise levels at natural gas fields are not unusually loud compared with human-made noise in many other parts of the country, which has important implications for protecting wildlife and possibly human health, the researchers said.

"This study shows that noise pollution reduces animal habitat and directly influences their fitness and ultimately their numbers," Guralnick said. "By doing so, it makes it harder for animals to survive. Taken together, that's a pretty damning picture of what human-made noise can do to natural populations of animals."

A 10-decibel increase in noise above natural levels can shrink animals' listening area by 90 percent, the researchers said. In the U.S., the amount of land area characterized by this moderate noise increase is an estimated 301,532 square miles - greater than the size of Texas.

"Hearing is the universal surveillance system across vertebrates, including humans," said co-author Clinton Francis, assistant professor of biology at California Polytechnic State University. "Hearing is also the sense that remains active even during sleep and other instances of unconsciousness. Because we and other animals rely on hearing in these capacities, it may not be too much of a stretch to expect similar physiological impacts on humans."

More information: Nathan J. Kleist el al., "Chronic anthropogenic noise disrupts glucocorticoid signaling and has multiple effects on fitness in an avian community," PNAS (2017). www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1709200115

Provided by: Florida Museum of Natural History

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Noise pollution causes chronic stress in birds, with health consequences for young

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Birds exposed to the persistent noise of natural gas compressors show symptoms remarkably similar to those in humans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, new research shows.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
National parks and sanctuaries are places that are kept intact - in their natural form - without human settlement and technologies causing any interference. These spots are a safe haven for the wide variety of wildlife.

However, a new study indicates that these parks are not as devoid of human activity as was believed to be the case. In fact, these areas are quite vulnerable to noise pollution, which are because of man's activities.

Noise Pollution Effecting National Parks And Animal Reserves

A group of researchers from the University of Colorado placed microphones in 492 natural protected areas and recorded sounds that are most prevalent in these regions. The study stretched many years as the researchers had to go around the country setting up the microphones and then later collect the data.

They caught natural sounds like wolves howling, birds chirping, rainfall, strong winds, rivers flowing, and even the bubbling mudpots in the Yellowstone National Park. However, they also detected man-made sounds such as jets flying, mining and logging equipment, and noisy road traffic.

Researchers analyzed the natural and man-made noises together. They discovered that in almost 63 percent of the locations noise humans produced were double of natural sounds. What is surprising is that in 21 percent of these protected areas, human noise was almost 10 times that of the natural ambient noise.

"The noise levels we found can be harmful to visitor experiences in these areas, and can be harmful to human health, and to wildlife," lead author of the study Rachel Buxton remarked.

Impact Of Noise Pollution On The Wildlife

The high level of noise humans produce near these sites disturbs the natural state of animals and birds. It is important for animals to hear the ambient sounds in the forests and parks as they rely on these to alert them of any impending danger. Similarly, predators depend on natural sounds to hunt down their prey.

"For these animals, it's literally a matter of life and death if they miss these subtle sounds of nature: the sound of a footfall or the sound of another animal breathing," biologist Kurt Fristrup explained.

Noise pollution may indirectly affect plants too, even though they do not possess the sense of hearing themselves, but depend on other animals for reproduction and pollination.

"Although plants can't hear, many animals that disperse seeds or pollinate flowers can hear, and are known to be affected by noise, resulting in indirect impacts on plants," Buxton noted.

However, scientists discovered that in some of the protected national parks, noise pollution was almost non-existent. Currently, most parks are looking to deploy some form of measures to curb noise pollution so that the wildlife remains undisturbed.

The results of the study have been published in the journal Science.

ⓒ 2018 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Study Reveals How Bad Man-Made Noise Pollution Is For Protected Natural Areas In The US

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Scientists discovered that human noise was almost double the amount of natural sounds in most national parks and animal reserves. This noise was harmful for the wildlife and disrupted their normal activities.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
COURTESY OF THIERRY LENGAGNE If you've ever lived near a busy road, you're familiar with the noise of cars whooshing by and ear-piercing honks. Traffic noise is a well-known source of stress in humans. Now, a team of researchers has found that it can cause increased stress levels in frogs too. And aside from a spike in stress, traffic noise can have other negative effects on the European tree frog ( Hyla arborea), such as suppressed immunity and a dulling of males' vocal sacs. The team's results were published last week (January 11) in Conservation Biology.

To study the effects of road noise on frogs, Thierry Lengagne of the University of Lyon and the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and colleagues first recorded noise from a nearby high-traffic road. The scientists then played back the recording to 20 male frogs in the lab. After 10 days of 24/7 exposure to traffic noise at 76 decibels, the frogs showed signs of increased stress.

To quantify the amphibians' stress, Lengagne's team measured levels of the hormone corticosterone in frog saliva samples. Corticosterone levels increased from an average of 3.2 picogram (pg) per milligram (mg) of saliva at the start of the experiment to 5.06 pg per mg at the end of it-an increase of 58 percent.

Weakened immunity was another consequence of traffic noise exposure. Lengagne and colleagues carried out the phytohaemagglutinin swelling test for immunity on frogs and estimated that the immune responses of noise-exposed frogs were weaker than those of control animals by about 19 percent.

Suppressed immunity makes frogs more susceptible to disease, said Lengagne. "And disease is one of the main causes of the disappearance of amphibians."

A third effect of traffic noise was altered coloration of the vocal sac, which male frogs inflate when making advertisement calls to potential mates. The vocal sacs of noise-exposed males turned paler toward the end of the experiment, the researchers reported. Moreover, this loss of color was more prominent for higher-quality males that initially had the most colorful sacs.

Lengagne said that this could impact sexual communication among European tree frogs, as females tend to choose males that have colorful vocal sacs over males with duller coloration. But in noisy habitats, he added, the vocal sac color of an otherwise higher-quality male may appear similar to that of a poor-quality male, thus interfering with the ability of a female to differentiate between the two.

"Several studies have examined the effects of road noise on male calling behavior, [but] this study suggests a new mode by which road noise can have reproductive consequences," Tracy Langkilde, a professor of biology at Pennsylvania State University who was not involved with the work, wrote in an email. "It also suggests a host of unexplored effects of road noise mediated through color change. Beyond mate choice, color can be important for other forms of social communication . . . like territory defense or competition over other resources."

"This is an intriguing study showing that the effects of urban noise on frogs extend well beyond interference with their acoustic communication," agreed ecologist Kirsten Parris of the University of Melbourne, who also was not involved in the study. She added that the observed effects might be extended to studies on other animal groups that use visual signals to attract mates, such as reptiles and birds.

M. Troïanowski et al., "Effects of traffic noise on tree frog stress levels, immunity and color signaling," Conservation Biology, doi:10.1111/cobi.12893, 2017.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Constant exposure to the sounds of a busy road can impact a male European tree frog’s stress levels, immune system, and vocal sac coloration, scientists show.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Underwater noise - the overlooked catastrophe

# data[].attributes.headline
Video: Kids explain noise pollution problem

# data[].attributes.subject
Video: Kids explain noise pollution problem

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
IFAW - International Fund For Animal Welfare

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Kids explain how ocean noise polution affects marine wildlife

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Loud noise and vibrations from natural gas compressors influence the number of insects and spiders surrounding them, which could have consequences on other wildlife in the ecosystem, according to new research.

"Anyone who studies insects know that they run the world," said Jesse Barber, an associate professor at Boise State University in Idaho, and senior author of the new study published in Ecology and Evolution. "These animals are important to ecosystem function, and it's critical to know how human-caused noise is changing their distribution, behavior and ecology."

As part of the study, the research team used pitfall traps that contained propylene glycol, a sticky, sugary preservative, to capture spiders and non-flying insects in New Mexico's San Juan Basin at five sites with gas compressors and five ecologically similar sites without the compressors for two months. They then placed the bugs in alcohol and determined which species were present in each site.

The researchers found that sites with gas compressors had 95 percent fewer cave, camel and spider crickets, 52 percent fewer froghoppers and 24 percent fewer grasshoppers than nearby sites without compressors. Leafhopper numbers increased in the sites with the loud compressors, however, and some species such as jumping spiders, ants and leaf beetles did not show any differences in numbers.

"Why some groups were affected and some were not remains unclear," Barber said. "It's not as simple as one might hope. We need to study all trophic levels to mechanistically understand what's driving ecosystem level changes."

The researchers said a variety of factors may explain the different impacts on various species. For example, although leafhoppers, froghoppers and wolf spiders all use vibrational communication, leafhoppers increased with noise while the latter two decreased. This could be the result of species such as bats and birds that usually consume leafhoppers leaving the areas with loud noises, allowing their population to expand, Barber said.

Co-author Akito Kawahara, an assistant curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida in Gainesville, said it's important to continue these types of insect studies to determine the effects of other wildlife and the ecosystem. "Most people don't think about insects enough, and they're the most dominant animal group on this planet by far," he said. "We really need to start thinking about them rather than just how charismatic megafauna are affected. We can't paint a clear picture without understanding this holistically."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Noise pollution affects even the smallest wildlife

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Loud noise and vibrations from natural gas compressors influence the number of insects and spiders surrounding them, which could have consequences on other wildlife in the ecosystem, according to new research. "Anyone who studies insects know that they run the world," said Jesse Barber, an associate professor at Boise State University in Idaho, and senior author of the new study published in Ecology and Evolution.

# data[].attributes.headline
When a natural habitat, such as a forest or wetland, is altered so dramatically that it no longer supports the species it originally sustained. 

# data[].attributes.subject
When a natural habitat, such as a forest or wetland, is altered so dramatically that it no longer supports the species it originally sustained. 

# data[].attributes.body
Examples include:
- Habitat destruction: Include things such as, dredging rivers, mowing fields, and cutting down trees.
- Habitat fragmentation: Terrestrial habitats cut into fragments by roads and development. Aquatic habitats have been fragmented by dams and water diversions. Fragments of habitat may not be large or connected enough to support species that need a large territory where they can find mates and food.

- Habitat degradation: Pollution, invasive species, and disruption of ecosystem processes (such as changing the intensity of fires in an ecosystem) are some of the ways habitats can become so degraded, they no longer support native wildlife.

- Main Causes of Habitat Loss is: Agriculture, Land conversion for development, Water development , Pollution, and Climate change

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The planet's forests are shrinking, and it's playing out to the tune of massive species losses, a new study shows. And birds could be one of the biggest fatalities.

In the landmark study, published in Science Advances, researchers across the globe used results from seven separate experiments carried out in five continents to posit that habitat fragmentation is rife. Ultimately, they found that 70 percent of global forests lie within just half a mile of their edges, exposing woodland species to human developments and agriculture. Even worse, almost 20 percent of forested land has just 100 meters (the equivalent length of a football field) to buffer it from the outside world. "That means almost no forest can really be considered wilderness," said study leader Dr. Nick Haddad from North Carolina State University, in a press release.

When raveled ecosystems are whittled down, they're less able to support the species that comprise them. As a result, habitats around the world are losing 13 to 75 percent of their biodiversity. This study shows that forest ecosystems are particularly at risk of losing their flora and fauna.

In the United States, Audubon and other conservation groups recently signed on to a campaign to shield the country's largest stretch of forest, the Boreal forest, from this very fate. The Boreal Birds Need Half initiative seeks to protect the hundreds of bird species that are seasonal residents of this 3,500-mile-long tract of largely pristine forest that runs across from Alaska to the eastern seaboard. The habitat is vital to almost half of North American birds, 300 of which use it as a breeding base in the spring. "That Boreal forest is incredibly important, especially since the abundance of forest birds is at its peak there," says Curtis Smalling, director of land bird conservation for Audubon North Carolina. Logging and energy development are the biggest threats, causing millions of boreal acres to be cleared on an annual basis.

For birds, a football field's worth of forest just doesn't cut it: larger swathes promote breeding success and buoy bird populations. "In forests in particular, it's not just about their own particular territory, but a lot of species are also looking for a specific 'patch size'," Smalling says.

For instance, "if you have less than 70 percent forest cover at a landscape scale, Golden-winged Warblers don't like it." The same is true for songbirds like Vesper Sparrows and Cerulean Warblers, who respectively seek territory that's at least 40 hectares and 200 hectares in size. There's also the entire "edge effect" to consider: The more habitat shrinkage that occurs, the more birds will be exposed to predators and contaminants lurking on the outskirts.

Just as Haddad and his co-authors emphasized in the study, Smalling says it's important to look after fragmented habitat, even if it's not idyllic to wildlife. Smalling is part of the team that runs Audubon's Eastern Forest Conservation Initiative to protect birds in the eastern United States, which is mostly designated as a forest biome. "The effects of fragmentation are probably felt the largest here," Smalling says. By training foresters and landowners to be bird-friendly, the team aims to uphold what's left of forests and maximize their value to birds.

The new numbers on global habitat degradation may be shocking, but they also reveal what needs to be done, says Smalling. "Working to protect and conserve these big forest blocks is really critical and needs to continue. As for fragmented forests, "it really points to the fact that we shouldn't give up on those habitats."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Global Study Reveals the Extent of Habitat Fragmentation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Shattered forests are bad news for birds' survival.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
ew who watch the documentary Red Ape: Saving the Orangutan tonight on BBC2 could fail to feel some sense of responsibility for the desperate situation faced by Indonesia's orangutans. These extraordinary creatures are our closest relatives, sharing 97% of our DNA. Their similarity to us is astonishing. They are intelligent, inquisitive, smile and show empathy. They even laugh when tickled, like us, when most other animals have evolved to be ticklish only in an itchy, irritating sort of way as a protective reflex. Encountering orangutans in the wild is like nothing else I've experienced.

They once thrived in Indonesia's lush, green rainforests but over the last 50 years they have been forced from their home and killed. In the last 16 years alone, 100,000 Bornean orangutans have been lost. All three species - Bornean, Sumatran and the Tapanuli, a species discovered only last year - are now on the critically endangered list. The reason? It started in the 1960s as forests were logged for timber, but now it's palm oil.

Global demand for palm oil has increased six-fold since 1990. It's in half of all packaged products on supermarket shelves and to avoid it completely would be incredibly tricky. Although palm oil in food can no longer be described simply as vegetable oil and must be clearly labelled ( thanks to an EU directive in 2014), there is no such law for products such as soap, shampoo and other cosmetics. The supermarket Iceland's decision to ditch palm oil from all of its own-brand products was, it says, a response to the palm oil industry's catastrophic failure to halt deforestation and deal with the problem.

Even the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) - the industry body charged with ensuring registered companies trade only in oil that has not come from deforestation - is failing spectacularly. Just over a week ago, Greenpeace exposed massive rainforest destruction in Papua allegedly caused by palm oil companies that are subsidiaries of a current RSPO member. Buying from them were big multinationals including Unilever, Nestlé, Pepsico and Mars. The companies concerned have responded by saying they are taking Greenpeace's claims seriously and taking appropriate action. But if Greenpeace's assertions are correct, no company can claim the palm oil it uses is 100% "sustainable".

Red Ape reveals the truly remarkable work that International Animal Rescue workers are doing on the ground to save these animals. At this crucial stage in their existence, every life saved is vital to their survival. But if we want to save orangutans in the long term, as John Sauven, Greenpeace UK's executive director, says in the programme, we must save their home - the rainforest. You can sign Greenpeace UK's petition to support this mission.

Orangutans spend 95% of their lives in the trees, but right now, Indonesia's forests are disappearing at the rate of one football pitch every 25 seconds. In the absence of industry reform, multinationals such as those mentioned above must take responsibility. In fact, back in 2010 they actually promised to take responsibility. Then, members of the Consumer Goods Forum pledged that by 2020 they would no longer buy palm oil from any company that decreased the net amount of rainforest. But have they done anything about it? Not much, it seems. In fact, in January this year, when Greenpeace asked 16 companies to publish which palm oil traders they were buying from, many refused - although not those listed above.

With rainforest clearance continuing and the Indonesian government boasting a projected increase in palm oil production from 36.5m tonnes in 2017 to over 42m tonnes by 2020, the situation really is dire. And it's not just orangutans that are threatened. More than 69% of Sumatran elephant habitat has been destroyed within one generation, and there are fewer than 100 Sumatran rhinos left in the wild. People are part of this conflict too. Land grabbing and exploitation of workers, including the use of child labour, is endemic. And decades of deforestation for palm oil have created conditions ideal for furious forest and peatland fires. These fires, often deliberately started by companies clearing the land, threaten the health of people across southeast Asia and drive climate change.

Indeed, if nothing is done, eventually we will all pay the price, since land-use change, mainly from tropical deforestation, accounts for 12% of global carbon emissions. Keeping these forests intact really is vital for all life on Earth. There can be no more delaying until the next decade. 2020 is less than two years away and the burden of responsibility lies firmly with the multinationals. Palm oil can be produced without destroying rainforests but only if big companies support it. I won't let them forget their zero-deforestation promise. Will you?

Chris Packham is a naturalist, nature photographer and author

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Palm oil producers are wiping out orangutans - despite multinationals' promises | Chris Packham

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
ew who watch the documentary Red Ape: Saving the Orangutan tonight on BBC2 could fail to feel some sense of responsibility for the desperate situation faced by Indonesia's orangutans. These extraordinary creatures are our closest relatives, sharing 97% of our DNA. Their similarity to us is astonishing.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Despite signs that numbers of giant pandas are rising, suitable habitat has shrunk, according to satellite data.

The forests where the panda lives are in worse shape than in 1988, when it was first listed as endangered, scientists say.

Last year, the giant panda was downgraded from endangered to vulnerable on the IUCN Red List.

Habitat loss is the most serious threat to the animal, which is seen as an icon of global extinction efforts.

"What's new in this study is our ability to assess the status of the giant panda by using satellite imagery and then use that information to come up with recommendations of how better to manage this iconic threatened species," said Prof Stuart Pimm, of Duke University, North Carolina, US, who is a researcher on the study.

The news last year that the giant panda had been taken off the endangered list made headlines around the world.

The decision was made because numbers of wild pandas had risen in surveys. However, with only around 1,800 left in the wild, establishing new reserves and extending existing ones is crucial for the animal's survival.

"I think we now understand we've got to keep an eye on the habitats where pandas live," said Prof Pimm.

"But it also points to the need to try and re-connect isolated panda habitats by building what we call biological corridors."

Shrinking forests

Chinese and US scientists used geographic mapping, remote sensing data and satellite imagery to assess changes across the panda's entire range from 1976 to 2013.

Their study, published in the journal, Nature Ecology & Evolution, suggests that suitable panda habitats have substantially reduced.

Earthquakes, human encroachment, agriculture, road building, tourism and logging of forests have had the effect of dividing the areas where pandas live into ever smaller fragments.

"Habitat decreased nearly 5% from 1976 to 2001, but has increased since, said Weihua Xu of the Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

"However, the average size of the habitat patches decreased by 23% from 1976 to 2001. It has increased only slightly since."

Some of the changes in the region are encouraging, such as stopping logging and establishing nature reserves, said Jianguo Liu of Michigan State University.

"But conservation is a dynamic process with humans and nature in a constant push and pull to survive and thrive, so new solutions always are in demand," he added.

The giant panda was once widespread throughout southern and eastern China.

There are now estimated to be about 1,800 giant pandas left in the wild in six mountain ranges in China's Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu provinces.

Head of Asian programmes at WWF, John Barker, said pandas are increasingly separated from one another due to developments such as roads, which run through their ranges creating small isolated populations which are unable to meet and breed with each other.

"Creating wildlife-friendly areas and corridors that link these fragmented populations is essential, including finding ways for pandas to move over or under roads," he said.

"If the giant panda is to truly thrive in the wild we need to boost efforts to maintain their habitats, ensure that they are connected and safeguard the future for pandas by making sure that developments are designed responsibly with the lowest possible environment impact."

Follow Helen on Twitter.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Despite signs that numbers of giant pandas are rising, suitable habitat has shrunk, satellite data shows.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Shocking photos of koalas in their diminishing natural habitat have exposed the dire plight of the Australian marsupial.

The World Wildlife Fund has released satellite imagery showing a massive spike in the destruction of New South Wales koala forests.

A whopping 14 football fields of koala habitat is bulldozed each day. The rate of tree clearing has tripled in the state's north since the axing of the NSW Native Vegetation Act in August 2017.

Following the removal of laws protecting koala forests, more than 5000 hectares of koala habitat has been bulldozed in the NSW districts of Moree and Collarenebri.

That translates to a rate of about 14 football fields a day, according to a new report by WWF-Australia and the NSW Nature Conservation Council.

And an image of two koalas huddled together on cleared land in NSW makes the problem difficult to ignore.

WWF-Australia conservationist Stuart Blanch said the organisation estimated there were likely less than 20,000 koalas left in NSW and at the current rate, they were on track to be extinct in the state by as early as 2050.

"We have to stop this excessive tree-clearing if we want to keep koalas alive in the wild for future generations," Mr Blanch said.

"We are releasing this report on National Threatened Species Day to highlight that the destruction of koala habitat is accelerating in NSW and to call on the government to urgently strengthen the laws to ensure koalas and other threatened native animals are given the protections they need."

Nature Conservation Council boss Kate Smolski said the group's satellite imagery analysis confirmed the dire predictions of the government's own advisers, who warned the new laws would permit bulldozing of 99 per cent of identified all koala habitat on private land in the state.

"The area where this habitat destruction has occurred is one of the most heavily cleared in the state, with only 6 per cent of forest remaining while an additional 11 per cent was in sparse woodlands," Ms Smolski said.

"The NSW Government is responsible for opening the floodgates to the destruction of koala forests and woodlands on a scale we have not seen for more than 20 years.

"This report looks at a fraction of the state, so we fear this spike in deforestation in the north is just the tip of the iceberg."

The report concludes that repeal of the NSW Native Vegetation Act in August 2017 was likely the major reason behind the dramatic surge in forest and woodland destruction in this known clearing hotspot.

WWF-Australia and the Nature Conservation Council have launched petitions today to call on both sides of government to take action to protect koalas in NSW for future generations.
This story originally appeared in news.com.au.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Shocking photo highlights koala habitat destruction in Australia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Shocking photos of koalas in their diminishing natural habitat have exposed the dire plight of the Australian marsupial.

# data[].attributes.headline
Global warming is the gradual increase in the average temperature of the Earth's atmosphere and its oceans. 

# data[].attributes.subject
Global warming is the gradual increase in the average temperature of the Earth's atmosphere and its oceans. 

# data[].attributes.body
- The average temperature of the Earth has risen between 0.4 and 0.8 °C over the past 100 years.
- Burning of fossil fuels, land clearing, agriculture, and other human activities are believed to be the primary sources of the global warming over the past 50 years.
- The average global temperatures could increase between 1.4 and 5.8 °C by the year 2100.
- Global warming will lead to rising sea levels, as well as an increase in occurrence and severity of storms and severe weather events.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Explore National Geographic. A world leader in geography, cartography and exploration.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Science Trek | Habitat: Habitat Loss | PBS

# data[].attributes.headline
What is habitat loss and what are the solutions?

# data[].attributes.subject
What is habitat loss and what are the solutions?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
What is habitat loss & degradation?

Natural habitats are the physical, chemical and biological systems that support living things (i.e. plants, animals, fungi and microbes). More simply put, habitats are the places where these organisms live. Habitat is lost and degraded when natural or human-caused activities alter these places so that fewer species can live there. For example, when a section of forest is cut down and replaced with farmland or urban spaces, the living places of hundreds of species may be eliminated.

Although natural events such as landslides and earthquakes do alter the landscape, they generally occur in isolated areas and healthy ecosystems are able to recover from them. Human-caused habitat loss, on the other hand, is altering ecosystems on a global scale, often causing destruction that is irreversible, at least on a time scale that is of interest to society.

Habitat loss is not only a concern from the point of view of compassion for other species that share this planet. Humans are part of the great cycle of life on earth, and as such we depend on the overall function of natural systems for our own survival. Properly functioning natural systems create the air we breathe, break down our wastes, provide our food, purify our drinking water and ultimately supply all the materials we require for living. Each species plays an important role in its ecosystem. Habitat loss and degradation is the main threat to the world's endangered plants and animals, and is occurring at ever greater rates.

Despite this sobering picture, habitat loss is not always an inevitable consequence of human activities. There are ways to limit our impact on natural systems, for example by using principles of "smart growth" in urban planning (see More Information). Nevertheless, major changes and efforts are required to address this critical problem.

How does habitat loss & degradation effect ecosystems?

Habitat can be lost or damaged in a number of ways. Direct damage occurs when habitats are physically altered, such as when a wetland is filled in or a shoreline is replaced with a seawall. Pollution can cause indirect damage by making an environment too toxic for all or certain species. Invasive species can alter the structure and chemistry of ecosystems and out-compete native species. Some of these causes and impacts are summarized in the table below.

One example illustrates the possible impacts of habitat loss and degradation. Estuaries and wetlands are among the most productive ecosystems in the world, and provide many services of direct benefit to people; for example, water filtration and storage, and protection from storm surges and erosion. The habitats of these ecosystems are diverse. Intertidal mud flats, submerged eelgrass beds and salt marshes in estuaries house a diversity of animals including worms, crustaceans, shellfish, seabirds, shorebirds and waterfowl, fish (including commercially important species), seals, river otters, bears, raccoons and birds of prey. Wetlands host a similar diversity of freshwater species. Along with many microbe and plant species, these animals form a complex food web. Damage to or removal of one component of the food web can affect the function of the whole system.

Unfortunately, in many cases the value of estuaries and wetlands has been overlooked by people who have viewed them only as "waste" areas that could be diked, drained and filled in for agriculture, urban development or other more "useful" purposes. Close to 75% of the estuaries and wetlands present in the CRD at the time of European settlement have been lost. Although our perception of the utility of these sensitive areas is slowly changing, the damage continues today. The results include increased erosion, storm surge and flood damage, degraded water quality, and decline or extinction of plants and animals. Habitats in estuaries and wetlands are also damaged by pollution and invasive species. When certain types of plants and animals are killed off from these effects, other species that depend on them also die off or, when possible, move to another area.

Estuaries and wetlands are not the only types of ecosystems threatened with habitat loss. In 1997, 61% of streams in the Lower Mainland were classified as endangered, 24% were threatened and only 15% were "wild." Garry oak ecosystems, which support many rare and endangered species, were once common throughout southern Vancouver Island. They have now been reduced to isolated patches among urban and rural developments.

Habitat fragmentation occurs when previously connected habitat is split up by human developments such as urban areas, agricultural fields, logging and roads. This leaves smaller, isolated areas to be available for wildlife - in effect, habitat "islands." These islands have much more edge area exposed to stressors such as human disturbance, invasive species and pollution. Fragmentation interrupts the movements, foraging and hunting behaviours of many animals. People are coming to realize that isolated parks surrounded by human development are not sufficient to preserve wildlife. Rather, interconnected natural areas and wildlife corridors are needed.

With the population of the Georgia Basin/Puget Sound forecasted to exceed nine million people by 2020 (an increase from seven million in 2000), the problem of habitat loss is likely to get worse. After all, most modifications of natural areas by people degrades wildlife habitat to some extent. However, if urban growth is carefully planned and if people take on the challenge to reduce their impact on natural areas, habitat loss can be minimized.

Causes and impacts of habitat loss & degradation

Activity

Habitats Affected

Impacts To Habitats

Shoreline armouring ("hard" structures such as seawalls, angular rock, jetties, etc., built to protect beaches and shorelines from erosion)

Intertidal and subtidal shorelines (See altered shorelines )

Loss of complexity and surface area

Depletion of sediment supply to adjacent areas (see coastal sediment processes )

Increased exposure to wave energy; fewer species can survive

Fishing - bottom trawling (large ships that drag weighted nets with rollers across the ocean bottom)

Subtidal and deep water marine areas

Physical destruction of bottom-dwelling plants/animals

By-catch (unmarketable fish species that are thrown away)

Dredging (excavation in marine or freshwater areas)

Subtidal , intertidal and freshwater habitats

Physical destruction of bottom-dwelling plants/animals

Smothering of bottom-dwelling organisms with displaced sediment

Fewer plants can grow in reduced light; fish gills become clogged with sediment

Estuaries ; shorelines; wetlands

Productive intertidal and wetland habitat is destroyed, replaced with ecologically less valuable land use

Decline of commercially important species

Invasive Species

Shoreline, upland , freshwater habitats

Directly compete with native species for habitat, food

Alter structure of habitat; often create dense, unproductive monocultures

Logging and vegetation removal

Upland, freshwater, marine habitats

Destroys structure of habitat

Removes organic material necessary for soil replenishment; machinery disturbs soil

Can create erosion, which degrades water quality and causes further habitat loss

Less large woody debris in streams alters flow and channel characteristics

Reduces natural infiltration of rainwater

Log booming (storage of logs in lakes and sea ports)

Lakes, sheltered marine habitats

Accumulation of wood debris on the bottom of the water body smothers bottom-dwelling plants/animals

Chemical composition of substrate is altered

Decomposition of wood debris by bacteria depletes oxygen in water

Agriculture

Upland, marine, freshwater habitats

species crops (loss of wildlife habitat)

Possible runoff of livestock wastes, pesticides, fertilizers, into freshwater and marine environments

Transformation of streams into drainage ditches (less valuable habitat)

Sewage, animal wastes and fertilizer pollution

Streams, wetlands, lakes, marine areas

Nutrients cause explosive algae growth; decomposition of algae robs water of oxygen; "dead zones" created

Heavy metals and pharmaceuticals in wastes affect health of aquatic organisms

Sediments in sewage/animal waste may bury bottom-dwelling organisms

Industrial and automobile pollution

All habitats

Many substances are directly toxic to plants/animals; others have long-term cumulative effects on health

Heavily polluted areas become "dead zones" where few organisms can live

How does habitat loss & degradation affect people?

People rely on natural habitats, even those of us who live in the city. Bees and other insects pollinate many of the crops we eat. Birds and bats eat insect pests that threaten the crops. Forests supply wood for our houses. Many people eat wild plants, fish and game. Our drinking water is purified by forests and wetlands. Bacteria break down our wastes. And many types of plants, bacteria and fungi help to cure disease and maintain health; the millions of species not yet discovered may prove to be invaluable for health and technology products. These functions are sometimes referred to as "ecosystem services," and although it is difficult to value them in monetary terms, some people are attempting to do just that, so that these functions are not taken for granted (see "ecosystem valuation" in More Information).

Natural systems are extremely complex and knowledge about how they function is quite limited. However, the importance of a wide variety of species, some of which perform apparently "redundant" functions, is beginning to emerge. Preserving natural habitat therefore preserves biodiversity, and acts like a "savings fund" for the earth and for our future needs.

How Can I Help Reduce Habitat Loss & Degradation?

An important first step in preserving habitats is to identify them. Technologies such as satellite imagery, global positioning systems (GPS), geographical information systems (GIS) and remote sensing aid this task, and allow people to create many different types of maps. Maps can show where species and habitats are located, so that local residents, governments and developers can take them into account, and hopefully minimize impacts upon them. Sometimes community groups undertake mapping projects in order to identify sites that are important to them, for the cultural, social or natural values they represent. See "online mapping tools" in More Information for some examples.

There are many things individuals can do to prevent unnecessary damage to habitats:

Learn more about the natural habitats in your area, and help to educate others about their importance. Sources of local information include community stewardship groups, nature centres and online atlases and mapping tools (see More Information).

Help reduce pollution that can damage wildlife and habitat.

Before building on your property, learn about the natural habitat that may be impacted. There may be options to modify your project in order to better protect sensitive ecosystems on your land, and allow you to enjoy the wildlife that lives there.

Help to ensure the value of functioning natural systems is considered in land use decisions, and consider applying some of the principles of "Smart Growth" in planning. (See Ecosystem Valuation and Smart Growth in the More Information section.)

By using proactive shoreline and streamside development techniques, you may be able to simultaneously preserve habitat and reduce erosion and flood damage. For example, ensure buildings are set back an appropriate distance from the water body, limit the use of seawalls, and use native plants as a buffer along the shoreline.

Preserve existing wetland and salt marsh vegetation on your property, as it provides valuable habitat for birds, fish, amphibians and mammals. These areas also help to filter and store water and protect the shoreline from erosion and wave damage.

Plant native vegetation around your home and property. It provides habitat for native animals, limits the spread of invasive species, helps to prevent erosion, and usually requires less watering and maintenance (see natural gardening techniques)

When undertaking construction on your property, make sure sediment and pollutants do not run off into nearby streams and harbours.

Help to prevent the spread of invasive species in natural habitats.

Encourage the protection of key habitats through legislation, such as ecological reserves, parks, Marine Protected Areas and conservation covenants (see More Information). Keep in mind, however, such areas should also be linked with surrounding natural habitats, to avoid habitat fragmentation.

Special tips for fish habitat :

Consider options to conserve wetlands and estuaries on your property. These provide valuable juvenile fish rearing habitat.

Learn about methods available for agricultural operators to reduce damage to streams and the marine environment.

Where possible, leave large woody debris, such as fallen trees, in streams. It helps to slow down the flow of water, and creates sheltered pools for fish.

Ensure that sediment from construction activities is contained to prevent it flowing into nearby streams and wetlands (see "regulations and guidelines for development around water" in More Information).

Increase and improve fish habitat, while controlling erosion and sedimentation, by maintaining and planting native vegetation along shores and stream banks.

Eelgrass beds are important habitat for many fish species; see that link, as well as tips for protecting marine vegetation.

Additional Information & Links

Websites

Articles

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
Boats and boating--Equipment and supplies

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Natural habitats are the physical, chemical and biological systems that support living things (i.e. plants, animals, fungi and microbes). More simply put, habitats are the places where these organisms live. Habitat is lost and degraded when natural or human-caused activities alter these places so that fewer species can live there.

# data[].attributes.headline
Plastic Pollution is is the accumulation of plastic objects in the Earth's environment. 

# data[].attributes.subject
Plastic Pollution is is the accumulation of plastic objects in the Earth's environment. 

# data[].attributes.body
- Plastic pollution negatively affects wildlife, wildlife habitats and humans.
- Plastics that act as pollutants are categorized into micro-, meso-, or macro debris, based on their size.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
These 5 Marine Animals Are Dying Because of Our Plastic Trash… Here’s How We Can Help

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Plastic pollution affects at least 700 marine species and some estimates suggest that at least 100 million marine mammals are killed each year by it.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This story is part of Planet or Plastic?-our multiyear effort to raise awareness about the global plastic waste crisis. Learn what you can do to reduce your own single-use plastics, and take your pledge.

Read this story and more in the June 2018 issue of National Geographic magazine.

On a boat off Costa Rica, a biologist uses pliers from a Swiss army knife to try to extract a plastic straw from a sea turtle's nostril. The turtle writhes in agony, bleeding profusely. For eight painful minutes the YouTube video ticks on; it has logged more than 20 million views, even though it's so hard to watch. At the end the increasingly desperate biologists finally manage to dislodge a four-inch-long straw from the creature's nose.

Raw scenes like this, which lay bare the toll of plastic on wildlife, have become familiar: The dead albatross, its stomach bursting with refuse. The turtle stuck in a six-pack ring, its shell warped from years of straining against the tough plastic. The seal snared in a discarded fishing net.

But most of the time, the harm is stealthier. Flesh-footed shearwaters, large, sooty brown seabirds that nest on islands off the coasts of Australia and New Zealand, eat more plastic as a proportion of their body mass than any other marine animal, researchers say: In one large population, 90 percent of the fledglings had already ingested some. A plastic shard piercing an intestine can kill a bird quickly. But typically the consumption of plastic just leads to chronic, unrelenting hunger.

"The really sad thing about this is that they're eating plastic thinking it's food," says Matthew Savoca, a marine biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "Imagine you ate lunch and then just felt weak and lethargic and hungry all day. That would be very confusing." Fish such as anchovies, Savoca has found, eat plastic because it smells like food once it's covered with algae. Seabirds, expending energy their malnourished bodies don't have, roam farther in search of real food, only to drag back plastic waste to feed their young.

What makes plastic useful for people-its durability and light weight-increases the threat to animals. Plastic hangs around a long time, and a lot of it floats. "Single-use plastics are the worst. Period. Bar none," Savoca says, referring to straws, water bottles, and plastic bags. Some 700 species of marine animals have been reported-so far-to have eaten or become entangled in plastic.

We don't fully understand plastic's long-term impact on wildlife (nor its impact on us). We haven't been using the stuff for very long. The first documented cases of seabirds ingesting plastic were 74 Laysan albatross chicks found on a Pacific atoll in 1966, when plastic production was roughly a twentieth of what it is today. In hindsight, those birds seem like the proverbial canaries in a coal mine.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
For Animals, Plastic Is Turning the Ocean Into a Minefield

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This story is part of Planet or Plastic?-our multiyear effort to raise awareness about the global plastic waste crisis. Learn what you can do to reduce your own single-use plastics, and take your pledge. Read this story and more in the June 2018 issue of National Geographic magazine.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
However, the victim of this success appears to be much of life on Earth. And humans, one day, could find themselves among them.

For some 79 per cent of the plastic produced over the last 70 years has been thrown away, either into landfill sites or into the general environment. Just nine per cent is recycled with the rest incinerated.

How much plastic is in the sea?

With more than eight million tonnes going into the oceans every year, it is estimated there will be more plastic than fish by 2050 and 99 per cent of all the seabirds on the planet will have consumed some. It is thought the sea now contains some 51 trillion microplastic particles - 500 times more than stars in our galaxy.

Is it dangerous?

Some plastic is toxic and it can disrupt hormones crucial for a healthy existence. Even when it is not dangerous itself - or not known to be - plastic acts like a magnet for a range of other poisons and pollutants we have spilled into the natural world.

To sea turtles, plastic bags in the water can look like jellyfish, floating on the surface plastic can appear to be a tasty snack for a seagull, based on millennia of experience, and to baby perch it appears more appetising than the plankton they are supposed to eat.

Unsurprisingly, gulping down all this indigestible poison instead of food is bad for their health. So far, it is known that marine litter harms more than 600 species amid what some regard as the beginning of the sixth mass extinction of life on Earth.

Why should we worry about pollution in the sea?

And, of course, just like other animals that plastic is likely to be finding its way into the tissues of our bodies with potentially harmful consequences.

What's being done about it?

The world is, finally, starting to wake up to the problem.

Thirty countries have now joined the UN's CleanSeas campaign, including the UK, Canada, France, Indonesia, Sierra Leone, Brazil, Norway, Italy, Costa Rica, Kenya and Peru. The US, China, Russia and Japan have not.

Any other problems I should know about?

Plastic microparticles from cosmetics and microfibers from synthetic clothes are washed into the sewage system. While many pass through treatment plants and end up in the sea, others particles are caught up in sewage used to fertilise farmers' fields. After it dries out, it may get picked up by the wind and blown about.

Professor Frank Kelly, an expert in environmental health from King's College London, told a committee of MPs last year: "There's a real possibility that some of those microparticles will be entrained into the air and they will be carried around and we will end up breathing them."

Just how bad is it?

Eventually, the layer of plastic spread around the world from the 1950s onwards will form a noticeable line in the sedimentary rocks of the future.

And that is one reason - along with radioactive fallout from nuclear bomb tests, pollution, climate change effects such as higher sea levels, and the extinction of many animal species - that geologists are considering declaring the end of the Holocene and the beginning of the Anthropocene or the 'Epoch of the Humans'.

In a few decades, a blink of an eye in Earth's 4.5-billion-year history, plastic has not only changed the fabric of life but the very rocks.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
However, the victim of this success appears to be much of life on Earth. And humans, one day, could find themselves among them. For some 79 per cent of the plastic produced over the last 70 years has been thrown away, either into landfill sites or into the general environment.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Plastic accumulating in our oceans and on our beaches has become a global crisis, with a direct and deadly effect on wildlife. The Center is working to stop plastic pollution at the source.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
© JIE ZHAO/GETTY IMAGES

White stripes, each about a meter wide, painted the land for as far as the eye could see. I was visiting the dry areas of the autonomous Ningxia region in northwest China with colleagues from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the nonprofit Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International. Those strips of plastic sheeting, I was told, allow farmers to grow cash crops and grains despite the desert-like conditions. The sheets, usually composed of polyethylene, help conserve water, suppress weeds, and boost soil temperatures, effectively increasing crop yields by 20 to 60 percent.

The use of plastic "mulch" to grow crops, known as the White Revolution, began in China in the late 1970s, and now covers 20 million hectares of the country's agricultural land, an area equivalent to half the size of California. Other countries in the Middle East, Europe, and North America also use plastic mulch.

Used sheets are expensive to collect and discard or recycle, leading some farmers to leave them on the field or illegally dump or burn them; often the sheets are not fully removed, as the thin plastic readily tears into small fragments that remain on the farmland, forming what is known in China as "white pollution." As new plastic mulch is applied year after year, soils can become enriched with plastic residues, which change the physical and chemical properties of the habitat that so many plants, animals, and microorganisms call home.

The use of plastic "mulch" to grow crops, known as the White Revolution, began in China in the late 1970s, and now covers 20 million hectares of the country's agricultural land.

The effects of plastic pollution in terrestrial environments remain largely unknown. To date, the majority of research has focused on aquatic systems, as 10 million to 20 million tons of plastic litter find their way to the oceans each year.

Starting in the early 1960s, researchers began documenting dead seabirds with stomachs full of plastic. Then, in 1997, racing boat captain and oceanographer Charles Moore captured the public's attention with his accounts of floating plastic debris in an area now known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, ranging from the West Coast of North America to Japan. In addition to large plastic trash, Moore described tiny colorful fragments, what are today known as microplastics, suggesting that a subtler pollutant was accumulating in the environment.

In addition to resulting from the physical fragmentation of larger plastic products, microplastics-loosely defined as particles in the size range of 100 nanometers to 5 millimeters-are introduced into the environment as a result of their use in a wide range of applications, from personal-care products to industrial abrasives employed in paint removal or cleaning. Nanoplastic particles of less than 100 nanometers have also found a wide range of applications in adhesives, paints, electronics, and more.

Marine organisms across all trophic levels have turned up with microplastics in their guts, and evidence is emerging from experimental studies that the plastic particles and the cocktail of chemicals they carry can wreak havoc on physiology, reproduction, development, and behavior in a range of species.

A steady diet of plastic

TYPES OF PLASTIC POLLUTION

Macroplastics: Greater than 5 cm
Plastic trash and large debris
that results from its fragmentation

Mesoplastics: 5 mm-5 cm
Plastic trash and large debris that results from its fragmentation

Microplastics: 100 nm-5 mm
Results from general wear-and-tear of plastic materials, including washing synthetic fabrics and abrasion
of car tires; also used in diverse products

Nanoplastics: Less than 100 nm
Results from general wear-and-tear of plastic materials; increasingly used in diverse products

Estimates of nano- and microplastic loading in terrestrial environments remain sparse, in part hindered by the heterogeneous nature of soil. But substantial levels of plastic pollution can be expected. Farmlands may be at particularly high risk. Even in areas that don't employ plastic mulching, farmers may apply microplastics-ridden sewage sludge as fertilizer, and treated wastewater is an important source of water for irrigating farmland.

Last year, estimates by a group of Scandinavian and Czech researchers suggested that we could be inadvertently adding some 44,000 to 300,000 metric tons of microplastics annually to farmlands in North America, and another 63,000 to 430,000 tons in Europe. The quantities from each region alone, the researchers said, would exceed the estimated 93,000 to 236,000 tons of microplastics in the surface water of all Earth's oceans.¹ And new studies of terrestrial environments are showing that, like marine animals, soil organisms ingest these microplastics.

While humanity moves slowly on addressing the plastics conundrum, small aquatic organisms are already making themselves at home on microplastic debris. In 2014, Julia Reisser of the University of Western Australia and her colleagues found that a diversity of algae, marine worms, barnacles, insect eggs, and microbes inhabit microplastics floating in the oceans surrounding Australia.² Animals higher up in the food web that eat these organisms ingest the plastics along with the prey, setting the potential for harm to reverberate through the ecosystem.

Last November, Matthew Savoca and his colleagues at University of California, Davis, provided evidence that the plastics may smell good to certain consumers. The researchers placed plastic beads in mesh bags tied to an oceanographic monitoring system, then recovered the beads after three weeks in the ocean. The team found that the beads emitted dimethyl sulfide-a compound produced by phytoplankton in response to grazing by zooplankton, which in turn attracts predators of the zooplankton. Using field data collected from 13,350 seabirds of 25 Procellariiform species, including albatrosses and petrels, the researchers found that bird species known to be attracted to dimethyl sulfide ingested the greatest amounts of plastic.³

The growing levels of microplastics in the environment-both aquatic and terrestrial-should thus be cause for concern. As plastic particles get smaller, a wider range of organisms is at risk of uptake or ingestion, and at the nanoscale, the particles can enter cells and move beyond the gastrointestinal system.

Scientists' understanding of the scale of the problem, in terms of both how much plastic pollution exists in the environment and the nature of the consequences for organisms and ecosystems, remains woefully inadequate.

The environmental toll

© Al Granberg. Source: Nature, 537:488, 2016; Science, 347:768-71, 2015 When examining the effects of plastic on the environment, researchers must assess not just the plastic polymer itself, which is generally considered inert, but the various chemicals (called additives) mixed in during the manufacturing process. A cocktail of plasticizers, such as phthalates, as well as flame retardants, stabilizers, pigments, and antimicrobials can improve the product's properties, such as transparency, flexibility, and durability.

Plastics also act as magnets for hydrophobic, or water-repelling, organic and inorganic pollutants, courtesy of their chemical and physical properties. Persistent organic pollutants, such as dioxins, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB), dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), have been detected hitchhiking on marine plastics.

Researchers have begun to document the toll of plastic additives and organic pollutants carried by microplastics on aquatic animals. Once plastics have been consumed, some of the chemicals are released from the plastic and transferred to the animal. If the chemical is fat soluble, it may accumulate in an organism's tissues.

In one experiment, an international research team fed shearwater chicks in Tokyo Bay PCB-contaminated polyethylene resin pellets, and later measured increasing levels of PCB in the birds' preen gland oil. ⁴ And laboratory experiments using rodent models have shown that exposure to plastic additives can disrupt the endocrine system, cause birth defects, reduce sperm production, trigger insulin resistance, and impair learning and memory.⁵

Research on the terrestrial environment is only starting, decades behind that on the marine environment. On land, nearly a half century of plastic mulching has provided initial insights into the terrestrial ecosystem's plastic burden. Last year, for example, a team of researchers in China found that soil microbial biomass and the microbes' overall metabolic activity decreased with increasing plastic mulch residues in the soil. The microbes' functional diversity, as measured by their use of different carbon sources, was also reduced. ⁶ Also last year, Esperanza Huerta Lwanga, a visiting researcher at Wageningen University and Research Center in the Netherlands, and colleagues found that earthworms fed microplastic-tainted plant litter grew more slowly and died earlier, although reproduction was unaffected.⁷ Another study, published this January, pointed to increased gut inflammation in microplastic-exposed worms.⁸

On land, the lifetime of plastics is estimated to be in the range of centuries. Because we currently have no way to get rid of them, microplastics will continue to persist and accumulate in soil and water.

Huerta Lwanga and her colleagues have also shown that earthworms play a role in transporting microplastics from the surface of the soil deeper into the ground. In experiments using thin boxes called formicaria that allow observation of the tunnels made by earthworms, the researchers found microplastics along the tunnels. A study published in March reported that springtails, a highly abundant group of microarthropods, can also transport microplastics in the soil.⁹ This movement of microplastics presumably makes the pollutants accessible to other soil organisms, though the possibility for bioaccumulation along the soil food web has yet to be determined.

If plastics are making their way through terrestrial ecosystems, the risks to plants, which form the base of many terrestrial food webs, must be assessed. Microplastics are not expected to be a problem for plants, as their large molecular weight would prevent them from passing through plant cell walls. Nanoplastics, however, can and do get inside plant cells. A study using tobacco plant cells showed that nanopolystyrene beads of 20 to 40 nm were taken up, while beads of 100 nm were not.¹⁰ More research is needed to determine how plants are affected, however, and whether there are any knock-on effects in the ecosystem.

Top Left and Bottom Left: NOAA Top right: Vberger/Wikimedia Commons; Bottom Right: Chris Jordan/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Headquarters

Plastics, plastics everywhere

Back in China, shipping containers full of plastic arrive at thousands of processing centers, ranging from small, family-run businesses to large operations. Almost half of recycled plastic waste in the U.S., Europe, and Australia is exported, and China is its biggest importer, using old plastic to make new products.

China is the largest producer of plastic products. In the award-winning documentary Plastic China, released in January of this year, director Wang Jiuliang captured images portraying the human and environmental costs of the plastic recycling trade: children playing amidst hills of trash, standing under a shower of fluffy plastic fibers, and using discarded surgical gloves as balloons.

While the questions of environmental impacts and human health risk remain open (see " The Human Consequence"), the world continues to rely heavily on plastics that pollute the environment. Some 8 percent of global oil production is used in plastic manufacturing, both as the raw material and for energy to power the process. In Australia alone, 1.4 megatons of plastics were used during the 2011 to 2012 financial year. That is equivalent to the mass of some 1 million SUVs consumed by a country with a population of fewer than 23 million people.

© iSTOCK.COM/YOUNG777 Ironically, durability, the characteristic that has made plastic so useful to humans, is a double-edged sword. A stark reminder of how persistent plastics are and how far they can travel from their point of origin came in 2005, when an albatross was found with plastic debris in its guts from a World War II plane that had crashed in the sea some 9,000 kilometers away six decades earlier. On land, the lifetime of plastics is estimated to be in the range of centuries. Because we currently have no way to get rid of them, microplastics will continue to persist and accumulate in soil and water.

So, what is the best thing to do based on current knowledge? We know that microplastics do not degrade easily in the environment. We know that nanoplastics can enter cells. We have observed that nano- and microplastics are ingested or taken up in a range of marine and terrestrial organisms and that some pollutants carried by microplastics are transferred from food to these consumers, with adverse effects.

With such high stakes, we must engage in existing solutions rather than wait for definitive answers. As stated in the 1998 Wingspread Statement on the precautionary principle, "When the health of humans and the environment is at stake, it may not be necessary to wait for scientific certainty to take protective action." Our priority should be to eliminate the unnecessary use of plastics, to improve and insist on biodegradable alternatives, and, above all, to fully understand what it means to live in a plasticized world.

Ee Ling Ng is a research fellow at the University of Melbourne and manager for the Australia-China Joint Research Centre: Healthy Soils for Sustainable Food Production and Environmental Quality.

© AL GRANBERG

The human consequence

As plastic pollution invades Earth's numerous ecosystems, it should come as no surprise that small particles and plastic additives have found their way into the human food supply.

In 2014, Lisbeth Van Cauwenberghe and Colin Janssen of Ghent University in Belgium tested for microplastics in two filter-feeding bivalve species grown for human consumption-blue mussels ( Mytilus edulis) and Pacific oysters (Crassostrea gigas). They found levels of microplastics in the animals' tissues that would translate to human dietary exposure of between 1,800 and 11,000 microplastic particles per year for Europe's minor and top mollusk consumers respectively.¹¹

A 2015 survey of 44 samples of 10 vegetables (capsicum, cucumber, Chinese cabbage, radish, green cabbage, lettuce, chrysanthemum, celery, spinach, and mustard) grown with plastic mulch in suburban greenhouses around Nanjing, China, documented the presence of a group of phthalates in all 44 samples.¹² Several had concentrations that exceeded allowable limits for human consumption or for soils set by both European and US governments. Microplastics have even been found in salt, unsurprising given that our seawater is being enriched with them.¹³

To date, no guidelines or regulations exist to limit the level of microplastics found in food products. And whether consuming these plastics will have effects on human health remains to be seen. Documenting such effects will require tracing each step along the pathways of exposure; food consumption is only one of those steps. It will also require research to reveal in greater detail how plastics, plastic additives, and other chemicals hitchhiking onto plastic during its residence in the environment act inside the body.

We do know that plastic additives such as phthalates are already widespread in human populations, based on monitoring in the U.S. and Europe. And human epidemiological studies have revealed links between plastic additives and metabolic, thyroid, reproductive, and respiratory problems.14 But the pathways of exposure to these plastic additives are numerous, and ingestion of microplastics, based on current knowledge, is not expected to be the major contributor of these plastic additives found in people. Indeed, in a report on nano- and microplastics in food released in May 2016, the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) Panel on Contaminants in the Food Chain stated that, while there is insufficient data for a complete human risk assessment, current evidence indicates microplastics in food are unlikely to be harmful.

1. L. Nizzetto et al., "Pollution: Do microplastics spill on to farm soils?" Nature, 537:488, 2016.

2. J. Reisser et al., "Millimeter-sized marine plastics: A new pelagic habitat for microorganisms and invertebrates," PLOS ONE, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0100289, 2014.

3. M.S. Savoca et al., "Marine plastic debris emits a keystone infochemical for olfactory foraging seabirds," Science Advances, 2:e1600395, 2016.

4. E.L. Teuten et al., "Transport and release of chemicals from plastics to the environment and to wildlife," Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci, 364:2027-45, 2009.

5. C.E. Talsness et al., "Components of plastic: Experimental studies in animals and relevance for human health," Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci, 364:2079-96, 2009.

6. J. Wang et al., "Effects of plastic film residues on occurrence of phthalates and microbial activity in soils," Chemosphere, 151:171-77, 2016.

7. E. Huerta Lwanga et al., "Microplastics in the terrestrial ecosystem: Implications for Lumbricus terrestris (Oligochaeta, Lumbricidae)," Environ Sci Technol, 50:2685-91, 2016.

8. A. Rodriguez-Seijo et al., "Histopathological and molecular effects of microplastics in Eisenia andrei Bouché," Environ Pollut, 220A:495-503, 2017.

9. S. Maaß et al., "Transport of microplastics by two collembolan species," Environ Pollut, 225:456-59, 2017.

10. V. Bandmann et al., "Uptake of fluorescent nano beads into BY2-cells involves clathrin-dependent and clathrin-independent endocytosis", FEBS Lett, 586:3626-32, 2012.

11. L. Van Cauwenberghe, C.R. Janssen, "Microplastics in bivalves cultured for human consumption," Environ Pollut, 193:65-70, 2014.

12. J. Wang et al., "Occurrence and risk assessment of phthalate esters (PAEs) in vegetables and soils of suburban plastic film greenhouses," Sci Total Environ, 523:129-37, 2015.

13. D. Yang et al., "Microplastic pollution in table salts from China," Environ Sci Technol, 49:13622-27, 2015.

14. J.D. Meeker et al., "Phthalates and other additives in plastics: human exposure and associated health outcomes," Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci, doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.0268, 2009.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Plastic Pollutants Pervade Water and Land

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
© JIE ZHAO/GETTY IMAGES White stripes, each about a meter wide, painted the land for as far as the eye could see. I was visiting the dry areas of the autonomous Ningxia region in northwest China with colleagues from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the nonprofit Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This article was created in partnership with the National Geographic Society.

Canada aims to ban single-use plastics by 2021

June 10, 2019

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Monday that in addition to banning single-use plastics, his government would take other, unspecified steps to reduce plastic pollution.

Trudeau did not specify the products to be banned, but said likely candidates include plastic bags, straws, cutlery, plates and stir sticks "where supported by scientific evidence and warranted."

"You've all heard the stories and seen the photos," he said. "To be honest, as a dad it is tough trying to explain this to my kids. How do you explain dead whales washing up on beaches across the world, their stomachs jam packed with plastic bags?

"How do I tell them that against all odds, you will find plastic at the very deepest point in the Pacific Ocean?"

Canada, which has 151,019 miles of coastline-the world's longest-and a quarter of the world's fresh water, joins a growing list of nations taking steps to reduce the use of disposable plastics. More than 60 nations have taken steps to reduce single-use plastics by imposing bans or taxes, according to a United Nations report published last year. In March the European Union's parliament voted to ban the top 10 single-use plastic items found on European beaches by 2021. The EU measure also calls for 90 percent of plastic bottles to be recycled by 2025. Member states must work out the details of bans before the 2021 deadline.

India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, who was overwhelmingly reelected last month to a second five-year term, declared in 2018 that India would eliminate all single-use plastic by 2022, an ambitious plan for the world's second most populated country.

Trudeau made his announcement at the Gault Nature Reserve outside Montreal. He noted that Canada recycles less than 10 percent of its disposable plastics, and is on track to throw away $11 billion worth of disposable plastic by 2030 unless things change.

He said the federal government will work with provinces and territories to introduce standards and targets for plastics manufacturers and retailers so they become more responsible for their plastic waste. Trudeau said he also supports efforts by Canada's minister of environment to create a nationwide strategy for zero plastic waste.

"This will be a big step but we know we can do this for 2021," Trudeau said.

Peru restricts single-use plastic

Visitors will no longer be allowed to carry in single-use plastics into Peru's 76 natural and cultural protected areas, from Machu Picchu to Manu to Huascarán, or national museums. This ban is now going into affect and was announced as a Supreme Decree by Peru's Environment Minister, Fabiola Muñoz, and signed by President Martín Vizcarra, back in November.

The decree says the goal is replacing single-use plastics with "reusable, biodegradable plastic or others whose degradation does not generate contamination by micro-plastics or dangerous substances."

At world-famous Machu Picchu, tourists produce an average of 14 tons of solid waste per day, much of it plastic bottles and other single-use packaging.

In December, Peru's Congress had also passed a law to phase out single-use plastic bags across the country over the next three years. According to Peru's Environment Ministry, the country uses 947,000 tons of plastic each year, while 75 percent is thrown out and only 0.3 percent is recycled.

San Diego Bans Styrofoam Food and Drink Containers

San Diego has joined a growing number of cities to ban containers made of polystyrene, better known as Styrofoam-the Dow Chemical trademark name for extruded polystyrene. The ban includes food and drink containers, egg cartons, ice chest coolers, aquatic toys for swimming pools, and mooring buoys and navigation markers. The ocean-side city is the largest in California to ban polystyrene.

Polystyrene's popularity as a container stems from its low cost, strength, insulation, and feather-weight buoyancy. Those properties also made it a scourge of plastic waste because it easily breaks into tiny, often airborne particles that are difficult to clean up and is generally rejected by recycling centers as too much trouble to recyclable.

The San Diego City Council voted 6-to-3 on January 8 to approve the ban, despite objections from owners of small restaurants who complained that the costs of using environmentally degradable containers, such as cardboard or compostable paper, could be double. The council first approved the ban last October for a trial period. This week's vote made the ban permanent.

D.C. Plastic Straw Ban Begins

One New Year's resolution, to use less plastic, is no longer optional for restaurants and other service businesses in Washington, D.C., as of January 1. By July, businesses in the district will begin receiving fines if they continue to offer plastic straws.

A number of local businesses have already started switching to reusable, washable straws or disposable ones made from paper or hay.

The law follows Seattle's ban earlier in 2018 and aims to reduce the impact of plastic straws as litter. More than 4,000 of the disposed items were found in a recent cleanup of the Anacostia River in D.C. Straws are known to hurt wildlife and are difficult to recycle, often ending up as litter. They make up only a tiny fraction of the total marine plastic pollution problem, leading some critics to say they are a distraction, while others say they are an easy place to start.

(Learn about the travel industry's war on straws and where plastic straws came from in the first place.)

Plastic Fact Named Stat of the Year

This week, Great Britain's Royal Statistical Society announced its statistic of the year. It's 90.5%, the estimated amount of plastic waste ever made that has never been recycled. Estimated at 6,300 million metric tonnes, scientists calculated that around 12 percent of all plastic waste has been incinerated, while roughly 79 percent has found its way into landfills or become litter.

That fact comes from a study published in Science Advances, "Production, Use, and Fate of all plastics ever made," by scientists Roland Geyer, Jenna Jambeck (a National Geographic Society fellow on plastic pollution) and Kara Lavender Law.

"We all knew there was a rapid and extreme increase in plastic production from 1950 until now, but actually quantifying the cumulative number for all plastic ever made was quite shocking," Jambeck, a University of Georgia environmental engineer who specializes in studying plastic waste in the oceans, previously told National Geographic.

"I am grateful to the Royal Statistical Society for the acknowledgement of the impact of this statistic, and while sobering, I am glad that it helps to spread awareness about the plastic waste management issues I see on the ground around the globe," Jambeck said in December.

"It's very concerning that such a large proportion of plastic waste has never been recycled," Royal Statistical Society President Sir David Spiegelhalter said in a statement announcing the winning fact. "This statistic helps to show the scale of the challenge we all face."

"Single-Use" Named Word of the Year

Collins Dictionary named "single-use" their word of the year in 2018, citing a four-fold increase in usage since 2013. The term means "made to be used once only" and refers to "items whose unchecked proliferation are blamed for damaging the environment and affecting the food chain," according to a press release from the dictionary's publisher.

Single-use is most often associated with the plastic pollution crisis. Some 40 percent of all plastic produced is used for packaging, much of it used only once and thrown away.

Many efforts to curb the plastic litter crisis are taking aim at single-use plastics, with the goal of encouraging more durable, reusable items.

Aquariums band together for "No Straw November"

November is the month of not shaving facial hair, and now thanks to a new conservation campaign, the month of not using straws.

Branded as "No Straw November," the campaign is a push to eliminate single-use plastic. The effort is led by the Aquarium Conservation Partnership (ACP), comprising 22 aquariums in 17 different states. They're pushing 500 businesses to commit to only serving plastic straws upon request. Already, the ACP has worked with large businesses like United Airlines, the Chicago White Sox, and Dignity Health hospitals.

They hope to commit the additional 500 by Earth Day, April 20, 2019.

The No Straw November campaign is also lobbying cities and regional governments to pass ordinances that encourage businesses to use fewer straws. Individuals are also being asked to sign an online pledge to limit their own personal single-use plastic. The efforts are part of what ACP is labeling a joint "#FirstStep" to plastic-free waterways.

Images of marine animals wrapped in plastic or caught with items like straws in their noses have been widely shared, raising awareness of the public. Aquariums have been leaders in phasing out plastic items at their own facilities.

In an interview discussing plastic straws with National Geographic earlier this year, David Rhodes, the global business director for paper straw manufacturer Aardvark Straws, said some of Aardvark's earliest clients were zoos, aquariums, and cruise ships looking to promote an eco-friendly image to their customers.

The ACP says their efforts to reduce dependence on plastic have already eliminated the need for five million straws over the past year.

Earlier this week, the ACP, partnering with the U.N. and European Commission, announced plans to create a global coalition of 200 aquariums that will campaign against plastic.

250 groups launch massive global plastic partnership

Two hundred and fifty organizations responsible for 20 percent of the plastic packaging produced around the world have committed to reducing waste and pollution.

The initiative is called the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment, and it includes a diverse group of members including the city of Austin, clothing company H&M, Unilever, PespsiCo, L'Oreal, Nestle, and Coca-Cola.

The Global Commitment touts a number of high-profile partnerships. It's a collaboration with the United Nations and is being led by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Other partners include the World Wide Fund for Nature, the World Economic Forum, the Consumer Goods Forum, and 40 academic institutions.

Ultimately, it's working to promote a circular economy for plastic, a concept that entails reusing or repurposing plastic instead of letting it sit in a landfill. The shift would require building or improving collection and processing facilities, and five venture capital firms have pledged $200 million toward the initiative.

Recycling used items into new products is one of the three targets set by the commitment. Corporations joining the commitment must also phase out single-use plastic packaging and ensure it can either be reused, recycled, or composted by 2025.

"While elements of the EMF Global Commitment are moving in the right direction, the problem is that companies are given the flexibility to continue prioritizing recycling over reduction and reuse," said Ahmad Ashov from Greenpeace Indonesia in a press release. "Corporations are not required to set actual targets to reduce the total amount of single-use plastics they are churning out."

Every 18 months, the targets will be reviewed, and participating businesses must publish data on their progress each year.

Governments that join the commitment are pledging to create policies that help support a circular economy.

EU Parliament approves single-use plastic ban

The European Parliament voted 571-53 this week to approve a measure to slash single-use plastic across the continent. The bill still needs to pass additional procedural measures before it can go into effect, but observers say its chances look good and could begin enforcement as early as 2021.

Citing a need to protect the ocean from a deluge of plastic pollution, the bill calls for a European ban on plastic cutlery and plates, cotton buds, straws, drink-stirrers, and balloon sticks, as well as reductions in other types of single-use plastics like food and beverage containers.

The bill was first proposed in May (see below). Great Britain has a similar effort underway (also see below).

The list of plastic items targeted was carefully selected to include items that already have ready alternatives, supporters say. Items with less available alternatives, such as cigarette filters, are being targeted for a more gradual reduction.

Belgian MEP Frédérique Ries, who proposed the bill, called it "a victory for our oceans, for the environment and for future generations," according to the BBC.

Consumer companies invest in waste collection

To keep plastic pollution from entering waterways, manufacturers either have to stop making it or make sure it's collected at the end of its life. But in some developing nations, that waste collection infrastructure is insufficient or nonexistent.

Circulate Capital, a New York City-based investment firm started in 2018, says they have raised $90 million to invest in this issue in Southeast Asia, a move endorsed by conservation group the Ocean Conservancy. CEO of Circulate Capital Rob Kaplan says this investment will go toward improving plastic waste collection on the ground and creating markets for collected material.

PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Procter and Gamble, Danone, Unilever, and Dow are committed to funding the $90 million investment, and Circulate Capital says a deal will be inked by early 2019. The firm says they are also working on ways for medium and small companies to invest.

"While we are working hard to ensure our packaging is designed to be circular, the reality is that it cannot be reused, recycled or composted without effective waste management systems in place," said Danone's Katharina Stenholm in a press release. She was referring to the concept of a circular economy, in which any waste materials in an industry, such as packaging, are reincorporated into new products.

The majority of the world's ocean plastic comes from 10 rivers, eight of which are in Asia, and Circulate Capital is working with scientific advisors, including National Geographic explorer Jenna Jambeck, to pinpoint where their investments can be the most effective.

Plastic bottles, for example, can be collected by small local companies and sold to manufacturers to make new products. Though discarded plastic is often of lower quality, some projects already underway have proved the model can function, and Circulate Capital hopes its investment can lead to new innovations. ( Read about an effort to recycle stranded fishing nets into carpet.)

"There's no silver bullet to stop plastic pollution," says Kaplan. "We're not going to be able to recycle our way out of the problem, and we're not going to be able to reduce our way out of the problem."

But, he hopes Circulate Capital's investments can serve as one piece of the puzzle. He estimates more than a billion dollars would be needed to really build out more efficient waste infrastructure in Southeast Asia. Circulate Capital hopes to bump their commitments to at least $100 million over the next few year as a move in that direction.

Redirecting plastic streams away from the sea

Major companies have been taking steps to eliminate the amount of plastic waste they produce, but what about plastic already in rivers or on beaches that could easily enter the ocean?

That's where NextWave, a coalition founded by companies including Dell and an environmental group called the Lonely Whale, comes in. By employing people living in coastal regions, the group collects discarded plastic within 30 miles of waterways to prevent it from making its way to the sea. So far, NextWave has focused on two types of plastic commonly found in marine environments: Nylon 6 and polypropylene.

This reclaimed plastic is then shipped to manufacturers who reuse it in lieu of producing new plastic. Plastic collection sites are chosen based on where cleanup could have the biggest impact and where the plastic could more easily be taken to an existing recycling facility. These location decisions are informed by science from chemists Jason Lochlin and Jenna Jambeck, a National Geographic explorer.

Today, computer company HP announced it would be joining the NextWave coalition. Since 2016, HP has been working with locals in Haiti to collect a total of 550,000 pounds of plastic that the company has since used to create ink cartridges. According to a press release, HP partnered with a non-profit called the First Mile Coalition, aimed at improving Haitian labor conditions, to create up to 600 jobs collecting plastic bottles.

Along with HP, Ikea has announced that it, too, will partner with NextWave. In addition, the furniture company has committed to phasing out single-use plastics from its stores by 2020, and to designing more sustainably sourced products, including more items made with recycled plastics, by 2030.

Ten companies are now members of NextWave, and they plan to source reclaimed plastics from Indonesia, Chile, the Philippines, Cameroon, and Denmark. NextWave does not yet have numbers for how much plastic they could potentially keep out of the oceans in total, but their website highlights that their partnership with Dell alone kept a total of 3 million pounds of plastic from entering the ocean over the past five years.
Correction: This story has been updated to note that HP worked with the First Mile Coalition in Haiti and to clarify the types of plastic NextWave works with.

American Airlines cuts plastic from lounges

After announcing this summer that they would ban plastic straws and stirrers on their flights (see below), American Airlines now says they will phase out single-use plastic in their lounges.

The airline has lounges in the U.S. and around the world. A representative from the company says the lounges won't serve drinks with straws, and plastic won't be used for flatware. Plastic water bottles will no longer be served, and reusable bags will be given to customers taking food to-go.

Changes to the airlines' lounges are currently going into effect, and onboard straws will be eliminated by November 1. Straws will be available for those who request one, and drink stirrers will be replaced by bamboo sticks.

Cumulatively, the company says their changes will eliminate 71,000 pounds of plastic waste annually.

Foodservice companies phase out single-use plastic

Some 13,000 schools, workplaces, and venues will be plastic bag and stirrer free by 2019, thanks to a new sustainability push by foodservice company Sodexo.

The company provides cafeteria-style meals and concessions to many such clients. Among them is National Geographic's Washington, D.C. headquarters, where compostable utensils and plant-based menus are offered.

Sodexo follows in the footsteps of other foodservice giants, Aramark and Bon Appétit Management, which announced similar sustainability measures this past summer (see below).

In addition to bags and stirrers, Sodexo plans to phase out polystyrene foam (colloquially called Styrofoam) containers by 2025. Plastic straws, a controversial item, will now only be available by request, which the company hopes will cut down on customer usage.

The move, says a representative from the company, will eliminate 245 million single use items that would have otherwise been used at its locations.

The decision is being applauded by environmental groups like Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund, who say that reducing consumption is a key step toward preventing plastic from entering landfills and marine environments. These non-profit groups are increasingly imploring food servers to cut back on the single-use plastic items they buy and sell to customers.

"As a company serving consumers in universities, workplaces, hospitals, schools, stadiums, and so many other venues, we understand both the potential impact we can make through a commitment to reduction and the real benefit that some of these products bring to people every day," Sodexo's vice president for corporate responsibility, Ted Monk, said in a press release.

President Trump Signs Bill to Clean Up Ocean Plastics

President Trump called out other nations, including China and Japan, for "making our oceans into their landfills" when he signed legislation last week to improve efforts to clean up plastic trash from the world's oceans.

"As president, I will continue to do everything I can to stop other nations from making our oceans into their landfills," Trump said at a White House signing ceremony. "That's why I'm please-very pleased, I must say-to put my signature on this important legislation."

The law, passed with bipartisan support, amends the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Marine Debris Act and funds the program through 2022. The law fosters efforts to clean up plastic trash from the world's oceans and encourages federal trade negotiators to prod "leaders of nations responsible for the majority of marine debris" to improve management of waste that ends up in the oceans.

Trump agreed with Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, one of the bill's co-sponsors, that trade talks with the Philippines should include plastic waste. "We're okay with that," he said. "I understand. A lot comes from there."

Trump also blamed other unnamed countries that "abuse the oceans" and whose trash floats to the West Coast of the United States," creating, he said, "a very unfair situation."

"It's incredible. It's incredible when you look at it," Trump said. "People don't realize it, but all the time we're being inundated by debris from other countries."

Comparatively, the beaches of the United States are among the world's cleanest. Kamilo Beach in Hawaii, which faces the Pacific gyre, where ocean trash collects, is the exception. But most of the world's plastic trash collects in coastal regions and on beaches in developing nations that lack adequate municipal waste collection systems.

Japan has had for years one of the world's highest recycling rates and earlier this year, China stopped buying the world's trash. The United States was one of the top sellers of recycled plastic to China.

The president's full remarks are here, and the text of the Save Our Seas Act is here.

Red Lobster Phasing Out Plastic Straws

The world's largest seafood restaurant company, Red Lobster, announced Monday that it will begin only offering plastic straws upon customer request starting this November in its 700 restaurants. By 2020, the company plans to only offer a more eco-friendly alternative to plastic straws.

The company says the shift should eliminate more than 150 million plastic straws per year, with the goal of reducing the marine plastic pollution problem.

"We are proud to be the first large casual dining restaurant company to make a commitment to eliminate plastic straws from our restaurants," Kim Lopdrup, CEO of Red Lobster, said in a statement. "This is a meaningful step in our long-standing commitment to protect and preserve the world's oceans and marine life. We hope our work helps raise awareness around the issue of plastic straws and encourages other businesses to make similar changes."

Red Lobster says it is looking into alternatives to plastic straws that will still meet the needs of customers with disabilities. (Learn more about plastic straw bans and how the travel industry is cutting back on plastic straws.)

California Approves Bill to Limit Straw Use in Restaurants

California has become the first state to implement a partial ban on plastic straws. Dine-in restaurants will no longer be allowed to automatically provide customers with straws. Instead, customers who need plastic straws will have to request them.

Restaurants that violate the ban will receive warnings first, and repeat offenders will be fined at a maximum of $300.

"Plastic has helped advance innovation in our society, but our infatuation with single-use convenience has led to disastrous consequences. Plastics, in all forms-straws, bottles, packaging, bags, etc.-are choking the planet," California's governor Jerry Brown said in a statement.

The new ban comes on the heels of previous plastic straw bans from companies and cities. Earlier this year, Seattle become the first large municipality to ban plastic straws in restaurants. Large corporations like United Airlines and Disney have also announced this year that they intend to phase plastic straws out of their offerings to customers. Many of these businesses and cities have said they will retain a stock of plastic straws available to customers upon request.

While some environmentalists applaud the move to reduce single-use plastic-plastic that's used once and then thrown away-bans on plastic straws have been met with some controversy.

Republican lawmakers in California opposed the ban, saying it would burden small business and do little to fight the larger plastic pollution crisis. Plastic straws make up less than one percent of the plastic found at sea.

Disability advocates also say straw bans place an unfair burden on people who have conditions that don't allow them to easily drink without straws. Some alternatives like paper fall apart and metal harm the inside of a person's mouth, they say.

Although California isn't the only region moving to limit single use plastic, the state has often tried to lead the nation in environmental legislation, particularly after what Gov. Brown says is a vacuum left by the Trump administration's decision to leave the U.N. Paris Climate Agreement.
Read the brief history of how plastic straws took over the world.

Giant Trash Collector Heads to Pacific Garbage Patch

The campaign to rid the world's oceans of plastic trash marks a turning point on Saturday as a giant, floating trash collector steams out of San Francisco on a mission to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Over the course of the next year, the device will undergo the ultimate tests and face some tough questions: Can technology prevail over nature? Did the engineers at The Ocean Cleanup in the Netherlands invent the first feasible method for extracting large amounts of plastic debris from the sea? Or will the wilds of the open Pacific tear it to shreds, turning the cleaner itself into plastic trash? Alternately, even if a Pacific storm does not devour the device, will it attract marine animals such as dolphins and turtles and fatally entangle them?

"I don't think it's going to work, but I hope it does," says George Leonard, the Ocean Conservancy's chief scientist. "The ocean needs all the help it can get."

United Airlines Bans Plastic Straws from Flights

United Airlines today joined others in the travel industry by banning plastic straws and cocktail picks on their flights.

The airline will instead use a biodegradable bamboo alternative, starting in November.

Alaska and American airlines moved to ban plastic straws earlier this year, and some cities, like Seattle, have outlawed their use entirely.

As one of the reasons for switching to a more sustainable form of straw, United cited this alarming fact: "Because straws don't biodegrade and are nearly impossible to recycle, it's likely that every straw ever used still exists on our planet."

"It's a small, but meaningful step to help minimize the impact plastic products have on our environment," the company said in a press release.

Carlsberg Beer Dumps Plastic Can Rings

Danish brewer Carlsberg will become the first beer producer to ditch those evil plastic multipack rings that hold beer and other cans together for holders made of recyclable glue, according to a company press release.

Carlsberg also says it will cut the amount of plastic used in its traditional can holders by 76 percent.

Here's how the glue-packs work: A drop of super-strong, temperature-tolerant glue is stuck on the side of a can, connecting it to the can next to it. If you want a beer, snap off a can. The glue will be recycled along with the can when it's recycled.

Carlsberg described the move as a "world first for the beer industry."

Disney Announces Ban on Plastic Straws

The Walt Disney Company announced a ban on single-use plastic straws and stirrers at nearly all its theme parks and resorts. The policy, which is set to be in place by mid-2019, will cut down on the upwards of 175 million straws and 13 million stirrers that are used at these locations each year.

Paper straws will be available upon request and, for guests with disabilities, the company is developing alternative options for traditional plastic straws. Disney will also eliminate polystyrene cups at its parks and cut down its reliance on single-use plastic bags. Instead of disposable bags, guests will have the option to buy reusable shopping bags.

Additionally, the company will reduce the amount of plastic in guest rooms by 80 percent. Over the next few years, Disney will transition to refillable amenities in hotels and on cruise ships. When single-use plastics cannot be reduced, Disney will continue to recycle and properly dispose of waste, the company says.

Disney has other conservation measures in place. In Orlando at Disney's Animal Kingdom, plastic straws and cup lids have been banned since the park opened in 1998.

Other theme parks, including SeaWorld, Busch Gardens, and Sesame Place, have announced initiatives to phase out straws and other single-use plastics. Earlier this month, Seattle banned plastic straws, and San Francisco is working to ban straws and other plastic items starting July 1, 2019.
In July 2018, Disney was approved to purchase 21st Century Fox, the parent company of National Geographic.

National Geographic Travel Partner Bans Single-Use Plastics

On July 25, Lindblad Expeditions, an adventure cruise company that has teamed up with National Geographic Expeditions, announced it had become 100 percent free of single-use plastics. Now, disposable plastic bottles, cups, straws, and stirrers are entirely banned from the fleet's 13 ships.

"The ocean is under major assault on so many fronts, and its protection is both a business mission and a personal passion," Lindblad Expeditions CEO Sven Lindblad says in a press release. "The health of our planet is dependent on our oceans, and it is essential that we change our behavior with regard to plastics."

Lindblad is known for its trips all over the world, particularly to places like Alaska and the Galápagos Islands. The company began working toward this plastic-free goal in 2007 when it banned single-use water bottles from its ships. Instead, it gave guests stainless steel bottles that could be refilled at filtered water stations on the ships. According to a study by the Adventure Travel Trade Association and the nonprofit Travelers Against Plastic, the average adventure travel operator uses nearly 30,000 single-use plastic bottles each year.

About 80 percent of tourism takes place near coastal areas, putting our oceans at a higher risk of plastic pollution. When packing for air travel, consider using three-ounce reusable containers for your toiletries and load them into a durable transparent washbag instead of a plastic bag. On flights, bring your own earphones and turn down "comfort bag" items wrapped in plastic. Bring your reusable water bottle with you and fill it up when you can.

For more tips, read how one of our writers attempted to explore Belize plastic-free.

Big Companies Take Aim at Plastic Straws

Retail, restaurant, and consumer-facing companies could potentially make a big impact in the fight to reduce plastic straw use. They drive much of the demand for straws from plastic manufacturers.

But these businesses are increasingly responding to consumer pressure.

Starbucks is among the most recent companies to announce they'll ditch plastic straws-in this case by the end of 2020. Instead of getting sucked up through a straw, their cold drinks will be served in containers with special plastic lids. Those lids are less likely to get stuck up a turtle's nose and should prove more recyclable than straws, but the company has still received some pushback because the lids are still made of plastic.

McDonald's is also planning to phase out plastic straws at their UK and Ireland locations, coinciding with UK and EU proposals to cut down single-use plastic.

Among the other companies that have moved to reduce how much they use plastic: Bacardi Rum plans to cut their straw usage over the next two years by a billion, food service management giants Bon Appétit Management and Aramark plan to reduce their single-use plastics by 2019 and 2022, respectively, Alaska Airlines will begin phasing out plastic straws this summer, and American Airlines will begin phasing out plastic straws this summer.

It remains to be seen if companies follow through on their goals, and it's clear that banning plastic straws is not going to solve the whole pollution problem. Supporters say reducing our use of straws is an easy first step, while detractors say it could distract from more important issues. In either case, taking aim at plastic straws has become rather fashionable this summer.

Chile's Ban on Retail Plastic Bags Stands

Chile's Constitutional Court ratified a bill that bans retail use of plastic bags across the country on July 6, ruling against an appeal that had been filed by the plastics industry. In June, Chile's Congress had unanimously approved the new ban, citing concerns of plastic pollution in the ocean and on land.

The country's Association of Industrial Plastics had sued to block the new law on constitutional grounds. But the court rejected their arguments.

Large retailers will have six months to phase out single-use plastic bags, while small businesses will have up to two years. The ban builds on a law passed under the previous president that had called for a prohibition on plastic bags along the country's 4,000-mile coastline.

In announcing the new ban, Marcela Cubillos, Chile's environment minister, told the New York Times, "We are convinced that our coast imposes an obligation to be leaders in cleaning up our oceans."

Chile's ban is the first country-wide one in the Americas. Similar bans have been passed in China, Kenya, France, and elsewhere. Many regional and local areas have bans or other restrictions, including taxes or fees aimed at discouraging the use of single-use plastic bags.

Seattle Becomes First U.S. City to Ban Plastic Straws and Utensils

In an attempt to reduce the amount of plastic waste polluting the land and water, Seattle banned the use of plastic straws and utensils in bars and restaurants starting July 1.

The roughly 5,000 eateries in the city are being encouraged to eschew providing straws or disposable utensils, or at least to switch to paper alternatives. A less green but still legal option, according to the city, is compostable plastic straws or utensils.

"Plastic pollution is surpassing crisis levels in the world's oceans, and I'm proud Seattle is leading the way and setting an example for the nation by enacting a plastic straw ban," Seattle Public Utilities General Manager Mami Hara said in a statement.

A similar ban that was proposed for Hawaii was defeated by opposition from industry. Other proposed bans are being debated in San Francisco, New York, and Washington, D.C., among other places.

Some advocates for the disabled have warned that straw bans need to take into account special needs. ( Learn more about the history of plastic straws and other efforts to remove them.)

<p>A whale shark swims beside a plastic bag in the Gulf of Aden near Yemen. Although <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/fish/facts/whale-shark">whale sharks</a> are the biggest fish in the sea, they're still threatened by ingesting small bits of plastic.</p>

EU, UK, and India Propose Plastic Bans

In draft rules released May 28, the European Commission proposed a ban on 10 common items that it says make up about 70 percent of the litter in EU waters. This includes plastic straws, drink stirrers, plates, and more.

The rules would still need approval from member states and the European Parliament to move forward. They would likely not go into effect for several years.

The proposed law would also mandate that EU countries collect and recycle 90 percent of plastic bottles by 2025. Plastic producers would be on the hook for most of the expense of waste management and cleanup efforts.

In April, British Prime Minister Theresa May announced her intent to establish a ban in her country on sales of single-use plastics, including straws and cotton swab handles.

Calling plastic waste "one of the greatest environmental challenges facing the world," May said she would work with industry to develop alternatives. An estimated 8.5 billion plastic straws are tossed out in the U.K. every year.

On June 5, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced his intent to eliminate all single-use plastic in the country by 2022. With a fast-growing economy and population of 1.3 billion, India struggles to manage its vast waste stream, and is a significant contributor to global ocean plastic.

"Let us all join together to beat plastic pollution and make this planet a better place to live," Modi said.

Experts caution that Modi's goal is far from being realized, and would likely take significant changes and investment from industry and the public. Already, industry lobbyists have taken aim at the efforts. The state of Maharashtra, home to megacity Mumbai, eased a ban on single-use plastic just a week after it unveiled the plan this summer. The state is working on a number of exemptions, for plastic of a certain thickness, products of a certain size, medical equipment, and other uses.

National Geographic is committed to reducing plastics pollution. Learn more about our non-profit activities at natgeo.org/plastics. This story is part of Planet or Plastic?-our multiyear effort to raise awareness about the global plastic waste crisis. Learn what you can do to reduce your own single-use plastics, and take your pledge.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A running list of action on plastic pollution

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The world is waking up to a crisis of ocean plastic-and we're tracking the developments and solutions as they happen.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Plastic is the most prevalent type of marine debris found in our ocean and Great Lakes. Plastic debris can come in all shapes and sizes, but those that are less than five millimeters in length (or about the size of a sesame seed) are called "microplastics."

As an emerging field of study, not a lot is known about microplastics and their impacts yet. The NOAA Marine Debris Program is leading efforts within NOAA to research this topic. Standardized field methods for collecting sediment, sand, and surface-water microplastic samples have been developed and continue to undergo testing. Eventually, field and laboratory protocols will allow for global comparisons of the amount of microplastics released into the environment, which is the first step in determining the final distribution, impacts, and fate of this debris.

Microplastics come from a variety of sources, including from larger plastic debris that degrades into smaller and smaller pieces. In addition, microbeads, a type of microplastic, are very tiny pieces of manufactured polyethylene plastic that are added as exfoliants to health and beauty products, such as some cleansers and toothpastes. These tiny particles easily pass through water filtration systems and end up in the ocean and Great Lakes, posing a potential threat to aquatic life.

Microbeads are not a recent problem. According to the United Nations Environment Programme, plastic microbeads first appeared in personal care products about fifty years ago, with plastics increasingly replacing natural ingredients. As recently as 2012, this issue was still relatively unknown, with an abundance of products containing plastic microbeads on the market and not a lot of awareness on the part of consumers.

On December 28, 2015, President Obama signed the Microbead-Free Waters Act of 2015, banning plastic microbeads in cosmetics and personal care products.

Video Transcript

Plastic is everywhere. A lot of it ends up in the ocean. Most plastics in the ocean break up into very small particles. These small plastic bits are called "microplastics." Other plastics are intentionally designed to be small. They're called microbeads and are used in many health and beauty products. They pass unchanged through waterways into the ocean. Aquatic life and birds can mistake microplastics for food. Research is being conducted. But there's still much we don't know. In 2015, the U.S. banned the use of microbeads. But microplastics are still a huge problem. You can help keep plastic out of the ocean. Remember: Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Microplastics are small plastic pieces less than five millimeters long which can be harmful to our ocean and aquatic life.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Species like the mountain gorilla are especially threatened by climate change because of their very limited, specific habitat.

Credit: Liana Joseph/Wildlife Conservation Society

More than 700 of the world's threatened and endangered animal species may be directly affected by climate change, according to a new study - vastly more than the number of animal species scientists initially thought would face risks from global warming.

Scientists had previously determined that only 7 percent of mammals and 4 percent of birds on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) "Red List" of threatened species are affected by climate change. However, a new study finds that the threat from climate change may have been massively underreported.

In a comprehensive analysis of 130 previous studies on the subject, researchers found that nearly half of the world's threatened and endangered mammals and nearly a quarter of birds are already seriously impacted - more than 700 species total. [ 8 Ways Global Warming Is Already Changing the World]

Most climate change studies focus on impacts in the future, but the researchers said the effects of global warming are being felt "here and now." And research on present threats were focused on specific species and were spread across numerous journals, according to study co-author James Watson, director of the Science and Research Initiative at the Wildlife Conservation Society.

"We did the study because no one had really pulled together the evidence of how much climate change has impacted species to date," Watson told Live Science. "We know that the last 50 years have been warmer than the 50 years before that, and that there's already been a 1-degree [Celsius] global warming event, but no one really talks about it."

Once the researchers combined the studies into one analysis, Watson said the evidence of change was apparent and they could generalize trends across species. For example, the species most threatened lived in areas that have already warmed dramatically, or they had very specific survival requirements.

Primates, in particular, are threatened because they have specialized diets and their tropical homes are vulnerable to extreme weather events caused by climate change. In some cases, species can adapt to the changes, but others are facing dire consequences, Watson said.

"For instance, mountain gorillas live on top of mountains - they've got nowhere else to go if the climate changes," Watson said. "They're stuck on top of these mountains, so they might not survive climate change because they can't move anywhere else."

Though birds can fly from mountaintop homes, the researchers found that species that live at higher altitudes and experience little seasonal temperature changes are negatively affected by climate change. Animals that dwell in aquatic environments also face even higher risks because these ecosystems are among the most vulnerable to global warming, according to the scientists.

While the analysis notes that slightly more than 700 species may be affected by climate change, the researchers said this study only scratches the surface of how many of the planet's endangered species are at risk. The studies reviewed for their research only focused on mammals and birds - the most well-studied taxonomic groups, according to the scientists.

"We looked at only the most mobile species that probably should adapt the best and we found that they're getting hammered," Watson said. "Cold-blooded animals are probably even more susceptible to climate change and we didn't even look at them yet. Certain types of plants even are far more susceptible, because they can't move - they're actually stuck in the soil."

The researchers are also calling for conservation efforts and governmental policies on climate change to focus on the present impacts on animals.

"We have to give species their best chance to overcome this, and the only way to do that is to keep nature intact," Watson said. "It's pretty simple really, we've just got to stop altering nature and degrading nature. We've got to keep things functioning and hope for the best."

The new analysis is detailed in a paper published online today (Feb. 13) in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Original article on Live Science.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Climate Threat to Wildlife May Have Been Massively Underreported

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
More than 700 of the world's threatened and endangered animal species may be directly affected by climate change, according to a new study - vastly more than the number of animal species scientists initially thought would face risks from global warming.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Rising sea levels. Raging storms. Searing heat. Ferocious fires. Severe drought. Punishing floods. The effects of climate change are already threatening our health, our communities, our economy, our security, and our children's future.

What can you do? A whole lot, as it turns out. Americans, on average, produce 21 tons of carbon a year, about four times the global average. Personal action is, of course, no substitute for meaningful government policies. We still must limit carbon pollution and aggressively move away from dirty fossil fuels toward cleaner power.

But it's important to remember the equally vital contributions that can be made by private citizens-which is to say, by you. "Change only happens when individuals take action," says clean energy advocate Aliya Haq. "There's no other way, if it doesn't start with people."

Here are a dozen easy, effective ways each one of us can make a difference.

1. Speak up!

What's the single biggest way you can make an impact on global climate change? "Talk to your friends and family, and make sure your representatives are making good decisions," Haq says. By voicing your concerns-via social media or, better yet, directly to your elected officials-you send a message that you care about the warming world. Encourage Congress to enact new laws that limit carbon emissions and require polluters to pay for the emissions they produce. "The main reason elected officials do anything difficult is because their constituents make them," Haq says. You can help protect public lands, stop offshore drilling, and more here.

2. Power your home with renewable energy.

Choose a utility company that generates at least half its power from wind or solar and has been certified by Green-e Energy, an organization that vets renewable energy options. If that isn't possible for you, take a look at your electric bill; many utilities now list other ways to support renewable sources on their monthly statements and websites.

3. Weatherize, weatherize, weatherize.

"Building heating and cooling are among the biggest uses of energy," Haq says. Indeed, heating and air-conditioning account for almost half of home energy use. You can make your space more energy efficient by sealing drafts and ensuring it's adequately insulated. You can also claim federal tax credits for many energy efficiency home improvements. To help you figure out where to start, you could also get a home energy audit, which some utilities offer free of charge. (Alternatively, you can hire a professional to come to your home and perform one; the Inflation Reduction Act offers a partial tax credit for this.) The EPA's Home Energy Yardstick gives you a simple assessment of your home's annual energy use compared with similar homes.

4. Invest in energy-efficient appliances.

Since they were first implemented nationally in 1987, efficiency standards for dozens of appliances and products have kept 2.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide out of the air. That's about the same amount as the annual carbon pollution coughed up by nearly 440 million cars. "Energy efficiency is the lowest-cost way to reduce emissions," Haq says. When shopping for refrigerators, washing machines, heat pump water heaters, and other appliances, look for the Energy Star label. It will tell you which are the most efficient. (There may also be rebates to earn from your purchase of Energy Star-certified products.)

And when you're ready to swap out your old machines, don't just put them on the curb: Recycling an old refrigerator through the EPA's Responsible Appliance Disposal Program can prevent an additional 10,000 pounds of carbon pollution because the global-warming pollutants in the refrigerants and foam would be properly captured rather than vented to the air.

5. Reduce water waste.

Saving water reduces carbon pollution, too. That's because it takes a lot of energy to pump, heat, and treat your water. So take shorter showers, turn off the tap while brushing your teeth, and switch to WaterSense-labeled fixtures and appliances. The EPA estimates that if just one out of every 100 American homes were retrofitted with water-efficient fixtures, about 100 million kilowatt-hours of electricity per year would be saved-avoiding 80,000 tons of global warming pollution.

6. Actually eat the food you buy-and compost what you can't.

Approximately 10 percent of U.S. energy use goes into growing, processing, packaging, and shipping food-about 40 percent of which winds up in the landfill. "If you're wasting less food, you're likely cutting down on energy consumption," Haq says. As for the scraps you can't eat or the leftovers you don't get to, collect them in a compost bin instead of sending them to the landfill where they release methane. Recycling food and other organic waste into compost provides a range of environmental benefits, including improving soil health, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, recycling nutrients, and mitigating the impact of droughts.

7. Buy better bulbs.

LED light bulbs use one-sixth the amount of energy to deliver the same amount of light as conventional incandescents and last at least 10 times longer. They're also cheaper in the long run: A 10-watt LED that replaces your traditional 60-watt bulb will save you $125 over the light bulb's life. And because the average American home has around 40 to 50 light bulbs, this is a simple swap that will reap huge rewards. If every household in the United States replaced just one incandescent with an Energy Star-labeled LED, we would prevent seven billion pounds of carbon pollution per year. That's equivalent to the emissions of about 648,000 cars.

8. Pull the plug(s).

Taken together, the outlets in your home are likely powering about 65 devices-an average load for a home in the United States. Audio and video devices, cordless vacuums and power tools, and other electronics use energy even when they're not charging. This "idle load" across all U.S. households adds up to the output of 50 large power plants in the country. So don't leave fully charged devices plugged into your home's outlets, unplug rarely used devices or plug them into power strips and timers, and adjust your computers and monitors to automatically power down to the lowest power mode when not in use.

9. Drive a fuel-efficient vehicle.

Gas-smart cars, such as hybrids and fully electric vehicles, save fuel and money. And once all cars and light trucks meet 2025's clean car standards, which means averaging 54.5 miles per gallon, they'll be a mainstay. For good reason: Relative to a national fleet of vehicles that averaged only 28.3 miles per gallon in 2011, Americans will spend $80 billion less at the pump each year and cut their automotive emissions by half. Before you buy a new set of wheels, compare fuel-economy performance here.

10. Maintain your ride.

If all Americans kept their tires properly inflated, we could save 1.2 billion gallons of gas each year. A simple tune-up can boost miles per gallon anywhere from 4 percent to 40 percent, and a new air filter can get you a 10 percent boost. Also, remove unnecessary accessories from your car roof. Roof racks and clamshell storage containers can reduce fuel efficiency by as much as 5 percent.

11. Rethink planes, trains, and automobiles.

Choosing to live in walkable smart-growth cities and towns with quality public transportation leads to less driving, less money spent on fuel, and less pollution in the air. Less frequent flying can make a big difference, too. "Air transport is a major source of climate pollution," Haq says. "If you can take a train instead, do that." If you must fly, consider purchasing carbon offsets to counterbalance the hefty carbon pollution associated with flying. But not all carbon offset companies are alike. Do your homework to find the best supplier.

12. Reduce, reuse, and recycle.

In the United States, the average person generates 4.5 pounds of trash every day. Fortunately, not all the items we discard end up in landfills; we recycle or compost more than one-third of our trash. In 2014 this saved carbon emissions equivalent to the yearly output of 38 million passenger cars. But we could be doing so much more. "Reduce should always be the number-one priority," says NRDC senior resource specialist Darby Hoover. And to reap the environmental benefits of "recyclable" goods, you must recycle according to the rules of your municipality, since systems vary widely by location. Search your municipality's sanitation department (or equivalent) webpage to learn exactly what you can place in the recycling bin, as counties and cities often differ in what they accept.
This story was originally published on April 20, 2022 and has been updated with new information and links.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
There are many ways to prevent global warming from becoming worse. Many nations have put laws into place to fight climate change -- here's what you can do.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
CLOSE

Will our favorite flightless bird waddle off to the sunset?

Some 70% percent of all the king penguins on Earth - around 1.1 million breeding pairs - will be forced to relocate or die trying by the end of the century if global warming continues at its present rate, according to a new study published online Monday

"The species may disappear," study co-author Celine Le Bohec, a scientist at the University of Strasbourg, told Agence France Presse.

The king penguin is one of several threatened species of penguins in Antarctica. Previous studies have found that other species - such as the emperor, Adelie and chinstrap - are also in danger of extinction or severe population loss due to climate change.

More: There are 12 million penguins in Antarctica. This researcher says that's not nearly enough.

The reason the king penguins are in trouble is that as the oceans warm, their favorite food - fish - will move south to cooler waters, away from where the penguins live.

King penguins, the second-largest penguin species, primarily live on small islands around the main Antarctic continent.

When the fish move away from those islands, parent penguins are then forced to swim farther to find food, while their kids wait, fasting longer and longer on the shore.

This study predicts that, for most colonies, the length of the parents' trips to get food will soon be so long that their children will starve, leading to massive King penguin crashes in population size.

Most problematic is that the penguins can't move with the fish. "The main issue is that there are only a handful of islands in the Southern Ocean and not all of them are suitable to sustain large breeding colonies," said study co-author Robin Cristofari, also of the University of Strasbourg.

Due to the burning of fossil fuels such as gas, oil and coal, the Earth's atmosphere and its oceans are warming to levels that scientists say cannot be explained by natural variability.

More: Penguins losing habitat in Antarctica, could be decimated by 2099

Now, for the first time in the history of penguins, these human activities are leading to rapid and possibly irreversible changes in the Earth system.

In fact, the part of Antarctica where the king penguins live is "one of the most rapidly changing ecosystems of our planet," according to the study.

The study was published in the peer-reviewed British journal Nature Climate Change.

Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2GLTyX3

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Move or die: Global warming threatens Antarctica's King penguins

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
CLOSE Will our favorite flightless bird waddle off to the sunset? Some 70% percent of all the king penguins on Earth - around 1.1 million breeding pairs - will be forced to relocate or die trying by the end of the century if global warming continues at its present rate, according to a new study published online Monday "The species may disappear," study co-author Celine Le Bohec, a scientist at the University of Strasbourg, told Agence France Presse.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Small island species, confined to limited terrain, are always vulnerable, particularly to invasive species, burgeoning human populations, and new diseases. On Hawaii, climate change intersects with these three factors to imperil its unique birds, including six species of honeycreeper.

Small island species, confined to limited terrain, are always vulnerable, particularly to invasive species, burgeoning human populations, and new diseases. On Hawaii, climate change intersects with these three factors to imperil its unique birds, including six species of honeycreeper.

The small, often brightly coloured honeycreepers tend to survive at higher altitudes where their forest habitat is less likely to be destroyed by humans. Higher elevations are also cooler, and less attractive to mosquitoes, which were first carried to Hawaii in the 19th century, long after the birds had evolved there. Outbreaks of mosquito-borne diseases such as avian malaria and avian pox began soon afterwards.
Global warning: live from the climate-change frontline as Trump becomes president
As the world warms, so mosquitoes move into higher elevations - and there is nowhere for the honeycreepers to escape to. The birds are particularly susceptible to avian malaria. Last year, a scientific study noted that the prevalence of avian malaria has more than doubled since the 1990s in the upper regions of the Hawaiian island of Kauai. Naturalists working in the Kauai mountains never encountered mosquitoes despite searching for them until the last six years or so, during which time they have become commonplace. As well as mosquitos, climate change is also assisting non-native competitors and invasive weeds, which may hasten the native birds' demise.

Eben Paxton, of the US Geological Survey's Pacific Island Ecosystems research centre, fears that two honeycreepers, the 'akikiki and the 'akeke'e, will fall extinct in the next decade "without major intervention". This means action unfamiliar to many conservationists: removing standing water to reduce mosquito populations, and even releasing genetically modified mosquitoes to reduce populations over time, as undertaken in Brazil to combat the Zika virus.

9 Baird's sandpiper

The Baird's sandpiper ( Calidris bairdii) is not likely to become extinct any time soon. It is still listed as a species of "least concern" on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) Red List. But the challenge posed by climate change for this elegant little wading bird is one experienced by many other species: it's a problem of phenology and synchronicity. Phenology, the study of the timing of natural events in relation to weather and climate, is increasingly complex and important in an era of rapid climate change. Changes in phenology may be a positive sign, demonstrating that species are adapting to climatic conditions and migrating earlier, or flowering sooner, or having offspring earlier in the spring to coincide with food supplies that are changing with the season.

But many species are struggling to adapt quickly enough. Increasing temperates in the high Arctic are encouraging shore birds such as the Baird's sandpiper to breed earlier in the season. This means that more chicks are emerging before the peak abundance of the insects that they feed own. Studies show that chicks raised outside the period of peak abundance grow much more slowly, which means they are less likely to survive into adulthood. A similar mismatch between chick emergence and peak food has also been shown to occur with the European pied flycatcher in the Netherlands.

8 Giant mountain lobelia

Facebook Twitter Pinterest

Giant mountain lobelia retreat to higher altitudes with rising temperatures but will eventually run out of mountain. Photograph: Danita Delimont/Alamy Stock Photo

Increasing temperatures are posing a challenge for all kinds of montane species. They may retreat to higher altitudes but, eventually, they will run out of mountain. Mountainous regions are also likely to experience particularly extreme temperature changes: while the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that 21st-century climate warming is likely to exceed 2C in many scenarios, the rate of temperature increase in mountainous areas is predicted to be much higher - possibly three times the increase recorded over the 20thcentury.

Scotland's rare mountain plants disappearing as climate warms, botanists find

The giant mountain lobelia ( Lobelia rhynchopetalum) is a native of Ethiopia, a spectacular-looking tropical alpine plant that resembles a spiky tropical palm but then shoots up a huge woolly protuberance, sometimes more than 10 metres tall. Implausibly large in arid mountainous terrain, the family of lobelia plants remarkably predate the formation of tall mountains in eastern Africa, to which they've adapted.

They are not finding it so easy to adapt to rapid anthropogenic climate change. A scientific study of the plant's prospects last year concluded it "will suffer massive reduction in range" under warmer climes, with just 3.4% of its habitat still suitable by 2080. By then, it is predicted to be confined to just four suitable mountain-top habitats "which may be too small to sustain viable populations". There's a further problem. As alpine species such as the giant mountain lobelia are confined to isolated mountaintops, their genetic diversity will narrow dramatically - by 82% - further increasing the likelihood of extinction.

The travails of this mountain giant are matched by mountain plant species around the world, including high-altitude species in Britain. Botanist Trevor Dines, of the charity Plantlife, says: "It's already clear that some of our rarest Arctic-alpine plants, such as Highland saxifrage, are at risk. As the climate warms, they're already moving to higher altitudes to find cooler, damper conditions. At some point, they'll run out of mountain to climb and we'll be facing the extinction of some of our most enigmatic and wonderful flora."

7 Bramble Cay melomys

Facebook Twitter Pinterest

The Bramble Cay melomys in Bramble Cay, the Great Barrier Reef. The rodent was last seen in 2009. Photograph: Ian Bell/Queensland Department of Environment and Heritage Protection

For many creatures, climate change is the most vicious component of a perfect storm driving them towards extinction. For some, extinction is quite literally caused by storms and rising seas. Anthropogenic climate change has almost certainly driven our first mammal species to extinction. The Bramble Cay melomys ( Melomys rubicola), or mosaic-tailed rat, lived the unobtrusive life of a small rodent in the eastern Torres Strait. It was first discovered - and killed - on the tiny vegetated coral island of Bramble Cay by Europeans in 1845. Several hundred lived there as recently as 1978. But the highest point of Bramble Cay is three metres above sea level and around the Torres Strait the sea level rose at almost twice the global average rate between 1993 and 2014. Since 1998, the area of Bramble Cay above high tide has shrunk from from 4 hectares to 2.5 hectares. The melomys has lost 97% of its habitat and was last seen by a fisherman in 2009. Scientists laid traps in 2011 and twice in 2014 to catch the little rodent and start a captive breeding programme to save it from extinction. But they were too late: they couldn't find any trace of the animal. There's a small chance an as-yet-undiscovered population may survive in Papua New Guinea but the scientists have judged it is almost certainly extinct.

6 Sierra Nevada blue

Facebook Twitter Pinterest

The Sierra Nevada blue is endangered due to habitat loss from overgrazing and a new ski resort. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

The Sierra Nevada blue ( Polyommatus golgus) is a small butterfly that is both brilliant blue (the male) and dark black-brown (the female) and is one of four endangered species unique to Spain. It is only found in the peaks of the Sierra Nevada and in another small mountainous area further north.

2016 could be worst year on record for British butterflies, experts warn

It has already lost habitat to overgrazing by animals, a ski resort, and the trampling of vegetation by people on roads and footpaths. But its biggest threat is climate change, according to a species recovery plan drawn up by the researcher Miguel Munguira for Butterfly Conservation Europe. Drought, increased temperatures and reduced snow coverage are set to displace the species to higher areas where the habitat might not be suitable. "For the populations living on the highest areas of the mountains these changes would mean their extinction," says Munguira.

Of the 482 species of butterfly in Europe, 149 are restricted to such small areas that it is difficult for scientists to assess how the changing climate will affect them. Isolated in such small pockets of land makes these rare insects hugely vulnerable - wild habitat is too fragmented for even winged creatures to easily find a suitable alternative. And those that can only live in northern Europe, or on the tops of mountain ranges, will be the first to go.

"The scale of threat to the species of Europe is massive," says Nigel Bourn, conservation director of Butterfly Conservation in Britain. "I don't really think policymakers have even begun to come to terms with that."

The disappearance of a few butterflies may not move the hardest of human hearts but these are the most closely monitored insects: the impact of climate change on hundreds of butterflies will be replicated in other less-known pollinators and insect populations - from bees to hoverflies - and the very fabric of life on earth will start to fray.

5 Sea turtles

Facebook Twitter Pinterest

Hawaiian green turtles bask on a beach littered with debris on a Pacific island. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

Rising seas and stormy weather will affect turtle species in the most direct of ways, eroding or destroying many of the beaches where they lay their eggs. But scientists have discovered that hotter sands also cause greater numbers of sea turtles to be born female. In the short term, over the next 20 or 30 years, this will increase turtle numbers. But a study published in Nature Climate Change examining the loggerhead turtles of Cape Verde in the Atlantic, warns that significantly warmer sands in the next 150 years could cause such a preponderance of females that species become extinct. Hotter sand can also cause complete nest failure.

Turtles are facing more problems than most animals: warming ocean temperatures will alter currents and shift the distribution and abundance of prey species. Species such as the hawksbill turtle are dependant on coral reefs which are bleaching and dying with climate change.

4 Adélie penguin

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The 10 species most at risk from climate change

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Small island species, confined to limited terrain, are always vulnerable, particularly to invasive species, burgeoning human populations, and new diseases. On Hawaii, climate change intersects with these three factors to imperil its unique birds, including six species of honeycreeper. Small island species, confined to limited terrain, are always vulnerable, particularly to invasive species, burgeoning human populations, and new diseases.

# data[].attributes.body
username: d303fox, password: brainpop

# data[].attributes.headline
What attributes make more plant species more invasive?

# data[].attributes.subject
What attributes make more plant species more invasive?

# data[].attributes.body
https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.2307/2265768

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
March 3 is World Wildlife Day and the theme this year is: "The future of wildlife is in our hands." One often-overlooked aspect of this is the current crisis of the global illegal trade in wildlife for use as pets. From Peruvian titi monkeys to Central Africa's African grey parrots to Madagascar's plowshare tortoises, the illegal global pet trade threatens countless species, sending many hurtling toward extinction.

The illegal and unsustainable emptying out of our forests, skies, and rivers to provide a steady stream of exotic pets is a fact often not widely understood by global consumers. That must change. Just last week, enforcement officers in Jakarta, Indonesia seized some 4,500 turtles destined for the pet trade in China, including 900 critically endangered snake-necked turtles.

In the 30 years between 1975-2005, 1.3 million African grey parrots were removed from the continent for the international pet trade and the species is now threatened. Central and West African forests likely lost double that number due to unreported illegal trade and high mortality in capture and transport. Where these birds were once abundant, there is a growing silence.

In Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, and Belize, the scarlet macaw has been reduced to isolated populations of fewer than 1,000 individuals due to illegal trade of this beautiful endangered bird.

All too often, these birds and other species suffer terribly in the process, with reports of animals smuggled in thermoses, nylon stockings, and toilet paper tubes. A Smithsonian reporter at an Ecuador market was once offered a parakeet along with advice for how to get it on an airplane: "Give it vodka and put it in your pocket. It will be quiet."

In some cases, the trade is driven by domestic demand in countries with some of the most spectacular biodiversity.

In Indonesia, many people keep caged wild-caught songbirds and bird-singing competitions are popular. Tens of thousands of birds of about 200 species can be found for sale in markets in Jakarta in a single day and some 28 local species of songbirds are threatened with extinction in the wild due to this trade.

It is not uncommon for species whose international trade is prohibited or regulated through the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) to be misrepresented by wildlife traders as being captive bred, giving the false impression that there is no negative impact on wild populations.

The result is that more animals are trapped and removed from their natural habitats, rendering them rarer and rarer while often sending their commercial value soaring. Our colleague Brian Horne, WCS Coordinator of Turtle Conservation, reports that certain species of Asian box turtles are now selling for as much as US$40,000 per hatchling.

Rare wood turtles from Central and South America are likewise being smuggled into Hong Kong, where they are selling for US$1,000. The very high mortality rates of many animals, especially wild-caught birds and mammals, means that for every one that arrives in a home, up to ten have been taken from the wild and died along the way.

Personal aquaria have also contributed to the pet trade crisis. Some 150 species of stony coral are traded globally - many of which find their way into home aquariums (more than 700,000 households in the United States alone keep marine aquaria). Removal of corals from the wild has contributed to the destruction of reef ecosystems and the fishing livelihoods of communities that rely on them.

If we are to curb this pernicious trade, it is critical that we clamp down on both the trafficking of wildlife for the pet trade through stricter enforcement, along with the demand for exotic pets that has helped to create such a profitable market for hundreds of threatened species.

What can you do? First, if you're in the U.S. you can encourage your elected representatives to support legislation seeking to stymie the illegal wildlife trade, such as the End Wildlife Trafficking Act. You can also express support for the work of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Obama Administration's Presidential Task Force on Wildlife Trafficking.

You can also ask pet stores where they source their animals, especially if you are interested in purchasing exotic birds, snakes, lizards, or turtles. Let them know that you care if they came from the wild rather than being born in captivity. If they don't know, do your own research.

The more questions you ask, the more empowered you are likely to feel in helping to curb the illegal trade in wildlife. This effort is bigger than one individual. If we all do our part, we can help to stabilize shrinking animal populations and even reverse their decline. This World Wildlife Day, remember that for so many wildlife species, the future really is in a very true sense in our hands.

--------------------
Dr. Susan Lieberman and Dr. Elizabeth Bennett are Vice President for International Policy and Vice President for Species Conservation respectively at WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
You Can Help End the Illegal Pet Trade - National Geographic Blog

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
March 3 is World Wildlife Day and the theme this year is: "The future of wildlife is in our hands." One often-overlooked aspect of this is the current crisis of the global illegal trade in wildlife for use as pets.

# data[].attributes.headline
The illegal pet trade and its effect on wildlife

# data[].attributes.subject
The illegal pet trade and its effect on wildlife

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In recent years, I have wanted an exotic pet. A cool reptile, a colorful bird, or even a dangerous insect. Being an animal lover, it was my dream to have an animal that wasn't a normal pet, like dogs and cats. I wanted to stand above the rest; while my friends had dogs, I could have a python or a sugar glider.

Despite my want of an exotic pet, I also realize that those exotic animals go through a big change when they are shipped here.

Animals are trafficked in a multibillion dollar trade called the illegal or exotic pet trade. Sure, the people who do this benefit a lot from this practice, but they put the animals through torture before they reach their destination..and some don't even make it there alive.

That's the sad reality of it. You see people showing off their tigers and cheetahs, but you never see the path that got that animal in that position. That animal was probably taken from its mother when it was a baby and was trafficked illegally from its home.

The people who partake in this harmful exchange are aware that what they're doing is illegal, but they just don't care. Their greed keeps them going. To be fair, the consequences for partaking this trade aren't what they should be and there aren't enough people to enforce these laws for it to change, but that's for another time.

Most, if not all, of these animals are taken from their natural habitats and shipped to the buyer. Sounds harmless right? If you think that, then you are honestly not very educated and don't have common sense or empathy. Think of the illegal pet trade as human trafficking. Both of these acts are inhumane and should be stopped.

In both, the victims of these heinous acts are lured in. The ways of luring may be different, but it's still luring and manipulation. Then, they are taken from their homes and are forced into horrible conditions. They are treated like objects, not living organisms. Then they are shipped in even worse conditions with other people and animals that are in the same predicament as them.

Sometimes officers manage to seize these illegal shipments and save these victims, but most times they escape unchecked. For those animals that survive this torturous process, they are either given to the buyer or left to sit in their containers because the order got cancelled.

The animals that are given to the buyer usually don't live good lives because the 'owner' doesn't know how to care for such an animal. They don't understand how the animal behaves and what they're needs are, or they feed them an unhealthy diet. These animals also haven't been put in the proper conditions, so on top of carrying diseases that we don't give vaccines for, they contract other viruses that their keepers catch because the proper safety precautions weren't taken and they were taken from the wild.

The animal(s) that make it to their buyer(s) end up in the same place, in the animal afterlife. Some die on their own from neglect or abuse, others are dropped off at zoos or animal hospitals where they are usually euthanized, or the keeper leaves them on the side of the road. All of these options end up with the animal dying long before it should.

What I'm trying to say is that animals are put through Hell to be forced into something they didn't want to be. I want an exotic pet just as bad as everyone else. But I know that these animals are prisoners of a sick world.

I believe that if people stop buying illegal animals that the trade will die down and eventually come to an end. Do your part and stop illegal animal trafficking.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Illegal Pet Trade and its Effects on Wildlife

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In recent years, I have wanted an exotic pet. A cool reptile, a colorful bird, or even a dangerous insect. Being an animal lover, it was my dream to have an animal that wasn't a normal pet, like dogs and cats.

# data[].attributes.headline
How the pet trade is killing off animals

# data[].attributes.subject
How the pet trade is killing off animals

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Global biodiversity loss doesn't just result from the destruction of habitats, or even hunting species for meat. A huge number of species are threatened by trade - both alive as pets or exhibits, or dead for use in medicines.

Though people have become increasingly aware of the threat posed by the trade of high-value species, such as the elephant for ivory, and various animals such as tigers, rhinos and the pangolin for medicine, few realise the risk that the pet trade poses to the future survival of many less well-known species.

On visiting a zoo or pet shop, you may expect that the reptiles and amphibians on show are bred in captivity, but many of these animals may have been imported live. In fact, 92% of the 500,000 live animal shipments between 2000-2006 to the United States (that's 1,480,000,000 animals) were for the pet trade, and 69% of these originated in Southeast Asia.

These exports are increasing annually from the majority of tropical countries. And without careful regulation, this trade may be disastrous for many species.

Legal trade?

Many zoos, aquaria and pet stockists formerly relied on "certified breeders" in many parts of the world (especially Southeast Asia and South America) to provide stock for pets and exhibitions. But it's now well established that only a small proportion of these animals are, in fact, captive bred. The vast majority may be harvested from the wild and laundered to appear legal.

One such case is the common Tokay Gecko ( Gecko gecko), of which Indonesia can legally export three million live annually ( as designated by CITES which determines legal exports quotas of all internationally traded species), in addition to a further 1.2 million dried for its mythical medical properties.

But breeding three million of these animals would require at least 420,000 females and 42,000 males; 90,000 incubation containers and 336,000 rearing cages; plus food and hundreds of staff. All that outlay would need to be recovered at the cost of under $US1.90 per gecko, and that's before considering death rates and the 1.2 million that are sold dried. As a result, the majority of these geckos are caught in the wild.

The same is true for an estimated 160 reptile species. Around 80% of Indonesia's green pythons ( Morelia viridis) (more than 5,337 annually) are estimated to be exported illegally, and almost the entire population of the Palawan forest turtle was captured by a single group to export across the region.

Due to collector demand for new and rare species, entire populations can be collected using academic publications to target animals as soon as they are scientifically described. At least 21 reptile species have been targeted this way and wild populations may become extinct soon after their discovery as a result. Academics have begun leaving precise locations of new species out of their publications to try prevent this.

Collector demand has driven a number of species to extinction in the wild, including the Chinese Tiger gecko Goniuorosaurus luii) and many other geckos known only to collectors and scientists. Yet these extinct in the wild, critically endangered and unclassified species are easily available from unscrupulous traders in America and Europe, via the internet or reptile fairs.

These threats are a particular risk to any newly described reptile species, particularly the reptiles of Asia as well as New Zealand and Madagascar.

For the majority of these species, legal trade has never been permitted internationally; all available animals come from illegal stock, and may represent the global population of some of these species.

An estimated 50% of live reptile exports are thought to be caught in the wild despite the fact under half of the 10,272 currently described reptile species have had their conservation status assessed. Under 8% have their trade levels controlled so developing appropriate priorities, quotas or management guidelines is almost impossible.

But this exploitation is not limited to reptiles and amphibians alone. Any species can fall prey to collectors, with primates, and orchid and bird species often suffering the same fate. More than 212 over-exploited amphibian species have been classified so far, with at least 290 species targeted for the international pet trade.

Surveys in Thailand revealed more than 347 orchid species available in a single market. They come from across the region and include many undescribed species, as well as those illegally transported into Thailand.

These species suffer the same fate as reptiles, with new discoveries often being exploited by the market, sometimes encouraged by researchers. They're easily available over the internet, resulting in the extinction of these species based to trade alone and the refusal to accept the threat of trade.

Many bird species are also under severe extinction threat because of the pet trade. They include thousands of birds in South America, and an estimated 3.33 million annually from Southeast Asia (1.3 million from Indonesia alone).

The pressure on Indonesian birds is so severe that in just one day in a single market over 16,160 birds of around 206 species were reported to be for sale, of which 98% were native to Indonesia, and 20% occurred nowhere else in the world.

Fish have similar statistics. Up to 98% of those in aquaria are wild caught from reefs and suffer death rates of 98% within a year. As a result, wild fish populations of species, such as the clownfish, have decreased by up to 75%.

Whose responsibility?

The illegal wildlife trade is the fourth largest illegal trade globally, worth about $US20 billion annually. About half comes from Southeast Asia.

But unlike other illicit trade, much of the illegal wildlife trade is not buried in the "dark web". Enforcement is generally so weak that traders of the majority of live animals and plants can operate in plain sight with little fear of reprisal.

The Lacey Act in the US prevents the import of live organisms from their countries of origin, in order to prevent potential laundering of wild-caught animals. But as Europe has no similar legislation, it provides a conduit in addition to an end point for trade.

The majority of the demand for these species, and especially rare species is from European and North American collectors. But, as only a tiny portion of this trade is regulated ( 2% of international amphibian trade, and 10% of global reptile trade), urgent action is needed to protect vulnerable species from possible extinction.

As many species of reptiles, amphibians and orchids have not been listed by CITES (due to insufficient information, or recent discovery), there is no real regulation in the animal trade. And customs officers cannot be expected to distinguish between a rare and a common orchid or frog, so simpler restrictions are required to prevent this potentially damaging trade.

Innocent until proven guilty?

As so many species have no CITES classification perhaps what we need is a paradigm shift so that only species classed as tradeable, and certified as such can be traded. This would mean all specimens without a certificate could not be transported internationally.

At present, tracking trade of whole groups is difficult as organisations that are in position to do this, such as the World Customs Organisation, do not include records for amphibians.

Many species in the West can only have arrived through illegal routes, yet domestic trade of these species once in a country is currently unrestricted. Licensing or certification systems should be created as a mandatory part of the sale of any taxa vulnerable to exploitation, with confiscations and punishments used to assist compliance.

Collectors of live animals and plants are predominantly hobbyists, so the majority are unlikely to go to great lengths to procure specimens if any level of enforcement were instigated. Such action also needs to extend to finally restrict the thriving trade via the internet in these species which currently exists.

Though pledges have been made by European governments to restrict wildlife trade, their efforts normally fail to account for the huge numbers of species at risk as pets and live specimens. Given the laundering and corruption in these species ranges, restrictions on import by consumer countries are urgently needed.

If we want any future for wild populations of these species, drastic action is needed to control their international and domestic trade. Without such action, we can expect to see the loss of many rare species to greed alone.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Trading in extinction: how the pet trade is killing off many animal species

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Global biodiversity loss doesn't just result from the destruction of habitats, or even hunting species for meat. A huge number of species are threatened by trade - both alive as pets or exhibits, or dead for use in medicines.

# data[].attributes.headline
Effects of climate change on coral reefs

# data[].attributes.subject
Effects of climate change on coral reefs

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
US Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How does climate change affect coral reefs?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Natural disasters such as hurricanes, tropical storms, tsunamis, and landslides have the potential to be the source of a tremendous amount of marine debris. High winds, heavy rain, storm surge, and flooding associated with these disasters can pull large structures, household products, and outdoor items into surrounding waters.

# data[].attributes.headline
Global warming could threaten 1-in-6 species

# data[].attributes.subject
Global warming could threaten 1-in-6 species

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Cranking up the planetary heat is going to ratchet down the planet's biodiversity, and new analysis suggests global warming could directly threaten 1-in-6 species with extinction if polluting practices continue unabated - up from about 3 percent today.

Scientists triggered alarm in 2004 when they warned in the journal Nature that climate change could drive 1 million varieties of plants and animals to extinction, but that was a rough estimate. In the decade since, researchers worldwide have been probing the dangers that could face individual species as climate change causes their ideal habitats to shift around them.

Those studies are collectively revealing a strong relationship between the amount of climate pollution that human activity pumps into the atmosphere, and the number of extinctions it's ultimately projected to cause.

An exhaustive analysis of more than 100 such studies, which was published Thursday in Science, concluded that warming recorded since the late 19th century could drive a few out of every 100 species to extinction. The number of species threatened could rise substantially with every degree of additional warming.

"The extinction risks are really dependent on the amount of climate change," said Mark Urban, a University of Connecticut associate professor who spent more than a year conducting the new analysis.

Vulnerable species are either expected to relocate too slowly as their ideal ranges morph and shrink or they're expected to have no place to go.

The greatest risks to biodiversity were found to be in tropical regions and in South America, Australia and New Zealand. Those places are all home to large numbers of species that have adapted to flourish within specific chunks of elaborate mosaics of tiny habitats, each harboring its own microclimate.

"The most species-rich places are the places where extinction risks are greatest," said Lee Hannah, a climate change and biology researcher at the nonprofit Conservation International. He was one of the authors of the 2004 study, which he later expanded into a book, Saving a Million Species. "We have a lot at risk in the tropics."

The survival of white-collared manakins in the forests of Costa Rica depends heavily on climatic conditions.
Credit: Heather Paul/flickr

The extinction risks analyzed by Urban would be posed solely by climate change. The planet is already in the opening throes of what could become the sixth great extinction of biodiversity since life began nearly 4 billion years ago, with contemporary extinctions caused largely by habitat losses and unsustainable hunting and fishing. The extinction risks posed by climate change would compound many of those other dangers.

"The suitable habitat for some species disappears almost completely as climates change," Urban said. "Think of a suitable habitat for a terrestrial species disappearing off a mountaintop."

Hannah praised Urban's analysis, saying it highlighted not only the need to slow global warming - but also to continue to rethink conservation strategies with climate change in mind.

Research shows that national parks, marine reserves and other protected areas can help protect species from a range of extinction threats, including those from climate change.

"If climate change is kept within some bounds, protected areas could be very effective," Hannah said.

If climate change continues unabated, however, Hannah said "expensive solutions" might be needed to protect species, such as captive breeding programs and the physical relocations of plants and animals to more hospitable climes.

You May Also Like:
Climate Change a Bigger Extinction Threat than Asteroids
Warming Puts Emperor Penguins at Risk of Extinction
Warming Could Slash Species' Habitat Ranges in Half

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Global Warming Could Threaten 1-in-6 Species

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Cranking up the planetary heat is going to ratchet down the planet's biodiversity, and new analysis suggests global warming could directly threaten 1-in-6 species with extinction if polluting practices continue unabated - up from about 3 percent today.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Initiators of climate change are getting away with it

In the coming decades, climate change is set to produce worldwide changes in the living conditions for plants, whereby major regional differences may be expected to occur. Thus today´s cool, moist regions could in future provide habitats for additional species, and in arid and hot regions the climatic prerequisites for a high degree of plant diversity will deteriorate. This is the conclusion reached in a new study by scientists at the Universities of Bonn, Göttingen and Yale, and published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society London. The study was funded by the Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz and the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF).

Dr. Jan Henning Sommer of Bonn University´s Nees Institute for Biodiversity of Plants asserts, "climate change could bring great confusion to the existing pattern of plant diversity, with scarcely predictable consequences for our ecosystems and mankind". The potential impact of climate change on global plant diversity has now, for the first time, been quantified and modeled on a regional basis. The researchers have investigated the numbers of plant species to be found in different regions under current climatic conditions, and the subsequent interrelationship they uncovered has now been applied to 18 different climate change scenarios for the year 2100.

However, the study does not permit any predictions regarding the degree to which the biodiversity of any given region will, in fact, adapt to new conditions or, in other words, whether additional species will migrate into favoured regions, or whether disadvantaged areas will in reality suffer mass losses of species. "That would be fortune-telling. The adaptability of species and their interactions in the ecosystem can, like human landuse, exert great influence on their distribution. This is a field about which we still know far too little", Sommer explains. Nevertheless, the published results do provide an important pointer to the likelihood of the scales of immigration or losses to be expected in given areas.

Globalisation in the Plant Kingdom

It is possible that the worst effects of global warming on plant species numbers could be felt in the tropical Amazonian rain forests in South America. For Germany and other temperate regions worldwide, on the other hand, scientists are expecting future climatic conditions which will promote the provision of habitat space for an increased number of species. "But this can scarcely be described as a gain as the intensified redistribution of plant species will promote worldwide uniformity in the regional composition of species at the expense of unique species which have adapted to special habitat conditions", says Sommer. And as a result, globalisation would also come to the plant kingdom.

In their study, the researchers have emphasised the clear division of our planet into two parts as regards the impact of climate change on plant diversity. "Additional capacity for plants species richness could be created everywhere where today cool and moist climatic conditions prevail", says Dr. Holger Kreft, the young research scientist from Bonn and co-author of the study, who has meanwhile assumed an appointment as junior professor at Göttingen University." On the other hand, in areas which today have a hot tropical or sub-tropical climate the prerequisites for high species numbers will deteriorate".

The main Originators of Climate Change less affected

This division also has a political dimension: favoured areas coincide largely with the industrialised nations, who are responsible for the majority of global warming due to their high amount of greenhouse gas emissions. The study also points clearly to the consequences of a half-hearted climate policy. Should the global temperature rise by 1.8°C with respect to the year 2000, then the proportion of favoured and disadvantaged regions in terms of species richness would still remain in balance. "Even if the climate protection goals agreed in Copenhagen are achieved, we would still tend to be heading for a rise in temperature of up to 4°C", says Sommer. In this case, the projected losses of capacity for plant species richness would considerably exceed possible gains in other regions.

"Politicians throughout the world should be paying greater attention to the impact of climate change on biodiversity as this is the basis of our human existence", demands Professor Dr. Wilhelm Barthlott, Director of the Nees Institute and co-author of the study. He and his study group have been investigating global plant diversity for 15 years. Barthlott welcomes the fact that the United Nations has declared 2010 to be the year of biodiversity. "This was an important signal!".

Contact:
Dr. Jan Henning Sommer
Nees Institute for Biodiversity of Plants
University of Bonn, Germany
Telephone: 0228/73-2125
hsommer@uni-bonn.de

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Global Warming threatens Plant Diversity

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Initiators of climate change are getting away with it In the coming decades, climate change is set to produce worldwide changes in the living conditions for plants, whereby major regional differences may be expected to occur.

# data[].attributes.headline
Climate change threatens hundreds of species

# data[].attributes.subject
Climate change threatens hundreds of species

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Study: Climate Change Threatens Hundreds of Mammal and Bird Species

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
An analysis of 130 studies reveals that the threat of global warming to wildlife has been underreported.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Climate Change Is Becoming a Top Threat to Biodiversity

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Warming rivals habitat loss and land degradation as a threat to global wildlife

# data[].attributes.headline
Global warming threatens genetic diversity

# data[].attributes.subject
Global warming threatens genetic diversity

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Luisa Rivera/Yale E360

Climate Consequences

Research on stoneflies in Glacier National Park indicates that global warming is reducing the genetic diversity of some species, compromising their ability to evolve as conditions change. These findings have major implications for how biodiversity will be affected by climate change.

The meltwater stonefly has adapted to a very specific and extreme niche - the cold, clear water that pours off of the melting ice and snow from the glaciers in Glacier National Park in Montana. This bug is on the leading edge of climate change because its frigid mountain habitat is rapidly disappearing. Since 1850, 85 percent of the ice in Glacier has disappeared, and all of it is forecast to vanish completely by 2020.

In a study published this year, researchers found the cold-loving insect in trouble. "Their physiology requires really, really cold water, and they can't survive once the water gets above an average of 9 degrees Centigrade during August," said Joe Giersch, a biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), who has studied this and a similar insect, the western glacier stonefly.

Meltwater stoneflies and western glacier stoneflies move upstream to find cold water as things warm, and because of steeper mountain topography, populations become separated. This has interrupted gene flow, causing some genetics to disappear. As genes dwindle, the species is losing genetic variation and likely "adaptive capacity" - the genetics that give species the ability to evolve needed traits as habitat conditions change. It's a big part of why the meltwater stonefly ( Lednia tumana) is being considered for listing as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act.

And many of its fellow high-altitude insects are in trouble too. This stonefly, Giersch and his co-authors wrote, "likely represents a guild of species facing similar threats in alpine headwaters worldwide."

There is a huge unknown when it comes to protecting the meltwater stonefly and other species. Biologists are missing a huge piece of the puzzle - knowing which genetics will give species the evolutionary lift that allows them to adapt successfully to a warmer world. This hidden DNA and the possibly important traits it represents are known as "cryptic diversity," and much of it is being lost, experts say, as the range of species contracts, fragments, and otherwise changes. Yet this DNA is vital because it contains information on different lineages and on species that are emerging, the cutting edge of evolution. Losing it will greatly complicate the task of assessing how climate change will affect biodiversity and what to protect.

What disappears before we know it could have far-reaching consequences. A long-term research project on the genetic variations in cottonwood trees, called the Cottonwood Ecology Group, found that the genotype of a tree affects the communities of some 700 insect species that depend on it, as well as chemical emissions, microbes, bacteria, lichens, beavers, and birds that feed on the insects. Should important genotypes disappear, whole ecological communities could change in unpredictable ways. "Genetic diversity in foundational plant species - alpine flowers, cottonwoods, or tall grass prairie - drive hundreds if not thousands of other species," said Thomas Whitham who heads the project at Northern Arizona University. "That's why climate change is an evolutionary event."

Often where the climate is changing fastest is where species are affected most. The bull trout, a threatened species that depends on very cold water in the Pacific Northwest, is also being impacted by warming. "What we found is that genetic diversity is lowest in those locations that are going to experience the greatest climate change and the most stressful environmental conditions," said Ryan Kovach, a USGS fisheries biologist in Glacier National Park who has published papers on the subject of bull trout and climate. "In other words they don't have genetic diversity where they are most likely to need it." That's because there are fewer fish in these habitats because of already stressful conditions.

These genetic studies are a race against climate warming that is happening far faster than predicted.

These kinds of genetic studies are a race against climate warming that is happening far faster than predicted. "Although genetic diversity is literally the fundamental building block for all life, it is almost completely ignored in the context of climate change," said Kovach.

Carsten Nowak, a conservation biologist at the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum in Gelnhausen, Germany, has also studied the genetics of climate change response in alpine insects, as well as in wolves and other species.

In 2011 Nowak and his colleagues conducted research in high-country Europe that looked at seven species of caddis fly and one species each of mayfly and stonefly, which like the stoneflies in Glacier National Park are cold-loving bugs. The scientists examined the species' genetics and divided them into a finer scale, populations within the species that are genetically distinct from each other, something known as Evolutionary Significant Units (ESUs).

If the climate scenario doesn't change, according to their work, 79 percent of the ESUs will go extinct by 2080, decimating hidden genetic diversity. If greenhouse gas emissions are reduced by the amount needed to cap global warming at 2 degrees Celsius, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has urged, then 59 percent of the ESUs are projected to disappear.

Nowak's study predicted that the loss of genetic diversity in Europe would be most marked in the Mediterranean region of southern Europe, which is also the area of the continent with the greatest genetic diversity. Even if populations disappear, no one knows what the loss represents. "We need to know if there are ten populations and nine disappear does that matter?" Nowak said.

Portuguese researchers forecasted in a paper published earlier this year that many lineages of amphibians and reptiles on the Iberian peninsula, which is expected to be hardest hit by warmer and drier weather, could disappear or contract within the next half century, causing a loss of cryptic diversity "with implications to evolutionary processes."

These losses are important because a species, for example, that is exposed to a new disease, might not be able to evolve resistance to it because the genetics that govern immune response are gone. Or the genes that allow a fish or stonefly to regulate its temperature in warmer water might disappear.

Scientists want to sequence the genomes of a species to understand which part is responsible for adaptation.

The good news is that there has been a revolution in the ability to sequence DNA - it's now much faster and far cheaper than ever. The goal of many conservation scientists is to sequence the genomes of a species and then understand which section is responsible for adaptation, including such traits as migratory abilities, dispersal, and the ability to adapt to warmer temperature. Once that's done, it allows managers to allocate scarce resources to protect the populations most essential for adapting to changing conditions.

Nowak cited the example of the Siberian tiger, whose population has dwindled to a few hundred. "Can we use the Indian tiger to repopulate Siberia?" he asked rhetorically. "If you have a lot of Evolutionary Significant Units and know what they represent, you might want some that are better at cold adaptation or fish catching," to repopulate Siberia. "You can't just protect the species, you have to protect the populations," the small units of a species that might have the genes necessary for adaptation. Knowing what they represent is the hard part.

As ecologically important species come on line with their adaptation capacity mapped, it will give managers a powerful tool to triage species to protect the adaptation genetics. They might even affect "gene rescues" by focusing on the populations with the most vital genes. "One of the options we have for the stonefly is translocation - moving one population to a different location," said Giersch. "That's after we investigate the hidden adaptations within the DNA to figure out which ones have the ability to adapt to warmer temperatures. That's a ways down the road."

Two species of trees have recently had their climate genes mapped and adaptive capacity located. A study published in September found that two distantly related trees - interior spruce and lodgepole pine - use the same set of 47 genes to deal with temperature, precipitation and other climate variables. Knowing about these adaptations trees is important because they migrate slowly, over generations, and assisted migration efforts with trees are already underway. "We have to understand climate adaptation in other conifers so we can address trees that are becoming mismatched" to their environment, said Sally Aitken, a professor of forest and conservation science at the University of British Columbia. That will inform better management strategies, she said, and enable us "to plant trees that are more likely to thrive and adapt more quickly to climate change."

Jim Robbins is a veteran journalist based in Helena, Montana. He has written for the New York Times, Conde Nast Traveler, and numerous other publications. His latest book, The Wonder of Birds: What they Tell Us about the World, Ourselves and a Better Future, is due out in May. More →

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How Warming Is Threatening the Genetic Diversity of Species

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Research on stoneflies in Glacier National Park indicates that global warming is reducing the genetic diversity of some species, compromising their ability to evolve as conditions change. These findings have major implications for how biodiversity will be affected by climate change.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
What is Global Warming aka Climate Change?

Global warming is the increase of the average temperature in the atmosphere and oceans over time due primarily to human influences. Since the late 19th century, scientists have monitored the fluctuations in temperature and studied global warming theories and trends to determine the causes and to assess the extent to which they are due to human activity. The greenhouse effect is largely caused by human-generated carbon dioxide (CO ₂) and, to some extent, by increases in solar activity, etc. The term "global warming" is used to imply a human influence while "climate change" is most often used in association with changes in climate with no easily identifiable cause, such as the processes that produced the Ice Ages.

"Top climate scientist James Hansen tells the story of his involvement in the science of and debate over global climate change. In doing so he outlines the overwhelming evidence that change is happening and why that makes him deeply worried about the future." Source: TED Talks | Discuss this at the MarineBio Blog

Current climate models (simulations) based on estimates of increasing CO ₂ and, to a lesser extent, by decreasing sulfate aerosols, predict that temperatures will increase by 1.4-5.8°C (2.5-10.4°F) between 1990-2100. This is a somewhat wide range; however, it is difficult to predict CO ₂ emissions because of the number of variables involved. Some climate studies have shown that, even in the absence of the CO ₂ emission variable, global climate will increase by 0.5°C (0.9°F) over the next one hundred years due to warming caused just by the ocean. In addition, models predict that sea levels will rise by about 10 cm over the next century.

Evidence of global warming includes decreased snowfall, rising sea levels and changes to weather trends. Precipitation levels, precipitation patterns, cloud cover, severe weather, and other elements will be impacted by the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. "Greenhouse gases" are so named because they trap radiant energy from the sun that would otherwise be radiated back into space.

The Kyoto Protocol was developed by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as an international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. The Protocol was entered into force in February 2005, and signed by countries committed to reducing CO ₂ emissions and 5 other greenhouse gases. They may also engage in emissions trading, or the purchase of credits from other countries that remain under the limits of greenhouse gas emissions. In this way, countries that may exceed the limits can still comply with the protocol. To date, 141 countries have ratified the agreement. Unfortunately, neither the United States nor Australia have been participating, which has generated speculation as to whether the Kyoto Protocol will successfully reduce greenhouse gases, even if completely implemented by all signed countries. Related news: Ignoring Planetary Peril, a Profound 'Disconnect' Between Science and Doha

Global climate change has been studied on a large scale based on analyses of global temperature fluctuations over thousands of years; for example, since the last Ice Age, which occurred approximately 12,000 years ago, global temperatures have been relatively stable. Studies on a smaller scale, however, show that temperatures in the lower troposphere have increased between 0.08 and 0.22°C per decade since 1979. Still, these modern day changes are not always linear, which has created a source of debate within the scientific community and the news media.

The study of paleoclimatology (ancient climates) is increasingly linked to modern day climate study. For example, the Earth was in an ice age for the last 160,000 years prior to the end of the last Ice Age. Earlier studies of this time period showed little variability in temperatures; however, more recent studies showed the variability to be about twice as great as previously published, indicating that temperature fluctuations are more frequent throughout time than first thought. However, this does not negate the impact of human activity on the current rate of global warming.

Climate change is caused by both natural and external forces, the latter including both human-greenhouse gases-and non-human causes such as changes in the Earth's orbit around the Sun, solar activity, and volcanic emissions. Science is increasingly pointing to human activities as the reason that global warming is accelerating.

The greenhouse gas theory started in the 19th century when the Swedish chemist and 1903 Nobel Laureate, Svante Arrhenius, determined that increases in greenhouse gas concentration would lead to higher global mean temperatures, while decreases would lead to colder global mean temperatures. His finding was a result of his research on ice ages, and was largely rejected by his peers at the time. A colleague of Arrhenius, Arvid Högbom, was one of the first scientists to study the carbon cycle. Arrhenius used his data to base his assessment that in 1890, emission and absorption of CO ₂ in the atmosphere were roughly in balance, and that burning fossil fuels would not cause problems. However, this was based solely on the use of coal, not on the use of fossil fuels in the automobile and other industries.

Video source and the Full Report

Opponents to the global warming theory postulate that water vapor and clouds will cancel out warming effect of CO ₂ emissions. However, the warming trends over the past few decades are increasingly negating the cancellation hypothesis. Furthermore, sophisticated computer models of the climate, validated by the scientific community in demonstrating accurate simulations of known climate variations such as El Niño events, have predicted that adding CO ₂ to the atmosphere will create a warmer climate in the future. The degree to which this warming will occur varies by model, however, and opponents of the global warming theory point out variables that models are not equipped to factor, such as changes in vegetation and cloud cover.

" The Biggest Control Knob: Carbon Dioxide in Earth's Climate History, Richard B. Alley, Ph.D., Penn State, American Geophysical Union (AGU) lecture, December, 2009.

In spite of the dying debate, it is known that coal-burning power plants, automobile exhausts, factory smokestacks, and other waste vents contribute about 22 billion tons of CO ₂ (6 billion tons of pure carbon) and other greenhouse gases into the earth's atmosphere each year. CO ₂ levels have increased by about 31% since 1750, about 75% of which can be attributed to fossil fuel burning. The remaining 25% is largely due to land-use change, particularly deforestation.

In their 2006 report, the IPCC stated that the atmospheric concentration of CO ₂ has exceeded levels over the natural range for the last 650,000 years. The consensus is that human activity is, in almost all aspects of global warming, the most likely cause. This is a change from the previous report that stated human activity was merely a likely cause.

Feedback & Citation

Start or join a discussion below about this page or send us an email to report any errors or submit suggestions for this page. We greatly appreciate all feedback!

Help Protect and Restore Ocean Life

Help us protect and restore marine life by supporting our various online community-centered marine conservation projects that are effectively sharing the wonders of the ocean with millions each year around the world, raising a balanced awareness of the increasingly troubling and often very complex marine conservation issues that affect marine life and ourselves directly, providing support to marine conservation groups on the frontlines that are making real differences today, and the scientists, teachers and students involved in the marine life sciences.

Join us today or show your support with a monthly donation.

With your support, most marine life and their ocean habitats can be protected, if not restored to their former natural levels of biodiversity. We sincerely thank our thousands of members, donors and sponsors, who have decided to get involved and support the MarineBio Conservation Society.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Global Warming - Climate Change - MarineBio.org

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Global warming is the increase of the average temperature in the atmosphere and oceans over time due primarily to human influences. Since the late 19th century, scientists have monitored the fluctuations in temperature and studied global warming theories and trends to determine the causes and to assess the extent to which they are due to human activity.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Our planet is warming. Here’s what’s at stake if we don’t act now.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The world is already 1° C hotter than it was between 1850 and 1900. There’s no question that limiting warming to 1.5° F will be difficult, but we have the technology needed to succeed.

# data[].attributes.headline
Poaching is the illegal hunting, killing or capturing of animals. 

# data[].attributes.subject
Poaching is the illegal hunting, killing or capturing of animals. 

# data[].attributes.body
Examples include:
- Taking an animal without a license or permit.
- Capturing animal with use of a prohibited weapon or trap.
- Taking animal outside of the designated time of day or year
- Taking an animals from a wildlife sanctuary, such as a national park, game reserve, or zoo.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Wildlife poaching has negative side effects that affect local communities, wildlife populations, and the environment. It is a crime fueled by a lucrative black market trade of animal parts. The animal parts are sold as novelty items and are sold for their "medicinal" properties. Environmental groups, animal rights groups, government agencies, and even the Duke of Cambridge are calling for an end to wildlife poaching. The United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), The World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF), and The International Anti-Poaching Foundation (IAPF) are leading international efforts to end wildlife poaching.

Poachers kill for profit. For example, bear gall bladders and big horned sheep antlers are worth top dollar for their so-called medicinal properties. This past November, at the National Wildlife Property Repository in Colorado, the wildlife service destroyed six tons of ivory confiscated at U.S. borders. Elephants are killed for their tusks because, while it is possible to remove the tusks without killing the elephant, they are too dangerous to remove when they are alive. The international community is responding. China recently increased its prosecutions of ivory smugglers, sentencing eight citizens to jail for bringing in over 3 tons of ivory between 2010 and 2012.

Effects on Local Communities

The United States is second to China in its desire for illegal wildlife parts. According to an On Earth article, poachers killed over 30,000 elephants last year. Experts believe that elephants will go extinct within the next decade if the killing continues at this rate.

The extinction of a species can have a negative economic effect on a local community's tourism industry. A community that relies on its wildlife to attract tourists is at great risk for economic hardship if the prevalence of poaching is high. Furthermore, a tourist boycott due to local poaching is a real threat. A boycott could have a detrimental effect on a community's economy since restaurants, hotels, rentals, and other attractions would suffer.

Effects on Animals

Extinction is the greatest threat to animals that are victims of wildlife poaching. In 2011, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUNC) declared the Western Black Rhinoceros extinct. This subspecies of the critically endangered Black Rhino was poached due to the belief in the healing properties of its horn.

The Sumatran Tiger is a critically endangered species right now. It is poached and sold for its parts (skin, teeth, bones, and claws) which sell for up to $5,000. Poaching is more lucrative than other jobs that are available in the region; a harsh reality faced by many individuals and communities.

Effects on the Environment

Poaching is also dangerous to the environment. When the North American Gray Wolf was on the brink of extinction, due to trophy hunting and poaching, the elk populations in Yellowstone National Park soared. With no natural predator, the elk nearly ate the aspen tree to extinction. Now, because of the increasing populations of gray wolves in the park, elk populations are balancing out and the aspen tree is recovering.

Our ecosystems are sensitive and must be preserved. The economic challenges of a community can lead to poaching, which in turn can lead to endangerment (and in the worst cases, extinction) of different species. We need various species of flora and fauna in our environmental ecosystems so that they can maintain healthy and balanced. The survival of our own species depends on it.

Get Involved

If you suspect poaching, use this list to contact the proper authorities. If you are a witness to poaching, dial 911 and report it. Wildlife poaching is a crime and should be treated as such.

Also, arm yourself with additional information, like from the sources below, and share it wide and far!

Easy Ways to Help the Planet:

Eat Less Meat: Download Food Monster , the largest plant-based recipe app on the App Store to help reduce your environmental footprint, save animals and get healthy. You can also buy a hard or soft copy of our favorite vegan cookbooks .

Do What You Can: Reduce waste, plant trees, eat local, travel responsibly, reuse stuff, say no to single-use plastics, recycle, vote smart, switch to cold water laundry, divest from fossil fuels, save water, shop wisely, donate if you can, grow your own food, volunteer, conserve energy, compost, and don't forget about the microplastics and microbeads lurking in common household and personal care products!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Devastating Effects of Wildlife Poaching

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Wildlife poaching has negative side effects that affect local communities, wildlife populations, and the environment. It is a crime fueled by a lucrative black market trade of animal parts. The animal parts are sold as novelty items and are sold for their "medicinal" properties.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
What would you do if you saw someone breaking the law? Would you report the offender to the police? Confront them? Or would you do nothing?

We recently asked more than 2,000 fishers in seven countries what they would do if they saw a poacher in a protected marine area.

Poaching - the illegal harvest of animals - plagues many of the world's marine protected areas. Illegal fishing undermines marine parks, and can threaten chronically over-fished species.

Read more: How to tackle the rising tide of poaching in Australia's tropical seas

A key problem is the lack of enforcement resources. An increasing number of governments and management agencies are encouraging fishers to help, by understanding marine protection rules and reporting poachers.

Yet little is known about how fishers respond when they witness poaching.

If you see something, say...nothing

We surveyed more than 2,000 fishers near 55 marine protected areas in Kenya, Tanzania, Madagascar, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Costa Rica, and Australia, asking if they had recently seen someone poaching - and if so, what they did.

We found nearly half had witnessed poaching in the last 12 months, and the most common response was to do nothing.

This was particularly prevalent on Australia's Great Barrier Reef, where nearly 80% of fishers did nothing after observing poaching. In six of the seven countries we surveyed, fishers said their inaction was because they wanted to avoid conflict - a sensible strategy in places such as Costa Rica, where illegal drugs are commonly trafficked on boats from South America to the USA.

Read more: Why poachers persist in hunting bushmeat -- even though it's dangerous

However, avoiding conflict was rarely the rationale around the Great Barrier Reef. Fishers in the Reef cited three main reasons for inaction:

1. uncertainty as to whether it was illegal fishing

2. a belief it was not their concern or responsibility

3. perceived obstacles to reporting (such as not knowing where or how to report).

Given the growing concern over the health and future of the Reef, it's important to enlist fishers in the fight against poachers. Encouragingly, many of the reasons for inaction can be fixed with better education and community outreach efforts.

Brock Bergseth

For instance, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority already has a hotline that fishers can call to report suspected poaching. But we found fishers regularly said they did not know how or where to report.

Promoting the hotline - perhaps by publicising times when it led to a poacher being fined or charged - would serve a double-purpose. It would be more accessible to legitimate fishers, and act as a deterrent. Our past research has found that a perceived low risk of detection acts as a motivation to poach.

Legitimate fishers want to help

It's important to remember the vast majority of all fishers on the Great Barrier Reef do not poach. Almost all fishers think poaching is both socially and personally unacceptable.

But previous research suggests poachers do tend to over estimate how common poaching is. This is called "false consensus effect" in psychology, and helps poachers to justify their poaching behaviours because they believe "everyone else does it".

By promoting understanding of anti-poaching rules, and actively enlisting fishers as environmental stewards, we can reduce the (false) idea that poaching is common, justifiable and harmless.

Read more: Why it's so hard to fight fisheries crime

Defending environmental rights can be a risky business and can expose fishers to potentially harmful retaliation by poachers; we certainly don't suggest fishers take the law into their own hands if they witness poaching.

But there are many non-risky ways for fishers to report poaching, such as hotlines in the case of the Great Barrier Reef. Promoting these avenues can help address the enforcement shortfall that is severely limiting the success of marine parks around the world.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The majority of people who see poaching in marine parks say nothing

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
What would you do if you saw a fisher breaking the law? Would you report the offender to the police? Confront them? Or would you do nothing? These choices affect the future of marine protected areas.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Poaching is a widespread issue affecting elephants in Central Africa, but a new paper published in the journal Conservation Biology by Duke University researchers underscores how this heinous act can impact considerably more than just the elephants themselves.
Image Credit: John Poulson
The researchers reached their conclusion after analyzing more than 158 independent studies involving elephant poaching and how it impacts surrounding habitats. After cross-referencing their findings with statistical records regarding forest feature dynamics, they distinguished numerous ecological transformations that can take place after elephant populations shrink.

"Without intervention to stop poaching, as much as 96 percent of Central Africa's forests will undergo major changes in tree-species composition and structure as local populations of are extirpated, and surviving populations are crowded into ever-smaller forest remnants," explained John Poulson from Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment, the lead author of the study.
Related: Is poaching causing more elephants to be born without tusks?
While it may appear unrelated at first, smaller elephant populations coincide with irregularities in nutrient and tree seed dispersal. Furthermore, understories aren't cleared as frequently as they would be in habitats booming with elephants.

"Because they are very large animals, they can eat fruits and disperse seeds too big for other animals to digest. And because they are highly mobile, they help disperse these seeds far and wide through their dung," Poulson continued.
Related: Study shows that elephant poachers follow similar patterns
"Many of Central Africa's forests are nitrogen limited. Elephants help compensate by moving nutrients, especially nitrogen, across the landscape as they defecate. If populations continue to shrink, this nitrogen will be concentrated in smaller and smaller areas, limiting future tree growth elsewhere."

As it would seem, elephant poaching does significantly more harm to Central African ecosystems than initially realized. The results of the study serve as an alarming wake-up call, reminding us how imperative it is that we put a full stop to poaching in its entirety. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done.

It should be interesting to see how animal conservationists will continue to mitigate animal poaching going forward. With a little luck, perhaps we can do more to save both elephants and the ecosystems they live in.

Source: Duke Nicholas School of the Environment

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Elephant Poaching Impacts the Entire Ecosystem

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Poaching is a widespread issue affecting elephants in Central Africa, but a new paper published in the journal Conservation Biology by Duke University rese

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A multinational team has undertaken the first continent-wide survey of African elephants, and the findings are deeply concerning. The Great Elephant Census, which so far includes 18 countries, indicates that the population of African savannah elephants is plummeting 8 percent every year.

"These dramatic declines in elephant populations are almost certainly due to poaching for ivory," wrote the researchers, who are drawn from conservation groups, government agencies and universities in the United States, Europe and Africa. The findings were presented this week at the World Conservation Congress in Honolulu, and published August 31 in the journal PeerJ.

The team focused on the largest and densest elephant populations, and counted both living elephants and carcasses from planes and helicopters. Together, they spent over 1,500 hours in 2014 and 2015 observing the animals over about a quarter of their range. Overall, the census yielded a population estimate of 352,271, which the researchers believe accounts for 93 percent of the savannah elephants in the countries they scoped out. Botswana held 37 percent of the elephant population, Zimbabwe 23 percent and Tanzania 12 percent.

Data from older estimates in fifteen of these countries indicate that elephant populations were actually on the rise between 1995 and 2007. But amidst a renewed outbreak of poaching, the population dropped by about 144,000 elephants, or 30 percent, between 2007 and 2014. The researchers calculated that, continent-wide, the population plunged by 8 percent every year between 2010 and 2014. If this keeps up, the areas included in the census could lose half their savannah elephants every nine years, and the elephants may soon vanish entirely from some areas.

"For too long now, we've said that we don't have precise, reliable estimates-that they're speculative, they're guess work," coauthor Mike Chase, founder of Elephants Without Borders, told National Geographic. "We're now armed with the most robust and accurate scientific data in history to give these animals a second chance."

The team plans to expand their census to South Sudan and the Central African Republic by the end of the year. Namibia was the only country with a large population of savannah elephants that was not part of the census. The census also did not include African forest elephants, which live in central African rainforests and may be a separate species. But poaching and habitat loss have imperiled these elephants as well. A separate demographic study published August 31 in the Journal of Applied Ecology indicates that forest elephants reproduce so slowly that it will take nearly a century for the population to recover from the poaching that has plagued it since 2002.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
First Africa-Wide Elephant Census Shows Dropping Populations

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A multinational team has undertaken the first continent-wide survey of African elephants, and the findings so far are deeply concerning.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Wildlife poaching has grave

consequences for targeted species and their habitats. Besides, it has clear environmental implications, which illustrate how our environment is connected to our well-being and economy, as this illegal activity negatively affects ecosystems, our health and prosperity of local communities.

It is important to know that the consequences to wildlife are not only devastating; they are also pervasive.

It is estimated that species population have declined by an average 40 percent between 1970 and 2000 [1].

In Africa, poaching has led to the extinction of wild rhinoceros in Mozambique. And many other regions across the continent have witnessed a drop by 97 percent in rhino populations just over the last 100 years.

A similar story emerges in Asia with tigers, a species that was commonly found across most of the continent. Sadly, according to IUCN, numbers of these beautiful animals have shrunk so much that they can be now found living on less than six percent of their historical range.

What is poaching of wildlife and why is it illegal?

Hunting animals is regulated by governments with the input of local wildlife officials who are knowledgeable with the number of animals within its jurisdiction and the number required to maintain a sustainable ecosystem.

Some species are critically endangered and are not allowed to be hunted or captured under any circumstances.

Others may enjoy a large population and pruning its numbers may even help ultimately sustain the ecosystem.

These decisions are made by considering the entire region and the relationships of wildlife and plants within it. In some areas, quotas may change seasonally depending upon the abundance or scarcity of the wildlife that particular year.

For example, one may be allowed to catch six trout longer than 8 inches one year and only three trout the next. One may be allowed to shoot one female white-tail deer during a designated period after its offspring become independent and outside of mating season and two male deer who have antlers with at least two horns on each side.

Hunting licenses are applied for and must be available for inspection. Accordingly, wildlife poaching can be simply shooting deer out of season or above the lawful quota, killing tigers in the neighborhood for safety reasons, or shooting coyote to protect sheep herds, but it is most often done for money.

In fact, the illegal wildlife trade is presently estimated by the World Bank to be between ten and twenty billion dollars annually [1].

The illegal wildlife trade has many players, from native bushmen to corrupt government officials. Much of the trade is orchestrated by international crime syndicates.

Many different tactics are employed and many people involved to ease passage through ports and across borders where the exit and entry of illegal wildlife trade should be deterred by government oversight. Interpol has found that these wildlife trafficking networks are commonly also used to smuggle other illicit commodities including drugs and weapons [2].

In 2014, several independent investigations merged to reveal a matrix of criminal organizations working together to move heroin, ivory and guns along a single network established on the Swahili coast [3].

Too, wildlife poaching typically involves the commission of other crimes to cover its tracks and ease the perpetration: tax evasion, money laundering and illegal firearms trafficking. Document fraud is a widely used tactic to obtain international permits regulated by international conventions.

Money is paid all along the route from poacher to buyer and the end consumer often pays a high price for the sought commodity, whether it is a tiger for a pet or its pelt for a rug, a perceived panacea for a terminal disease or an edible delicacy to be savored at an expensive restaurant in clear view of political rivals or powerful financiers.

Unfortunately, satisfying the buyer's desire is an end game for the animals hunted. Due to the astronomical prices that can be commanded, illegal wildlife trade focuses on the rare and exotic. This is pushing many already endangered species toward extinction [4].

Main reasons for poaching: Why do people poach?

Probably the most forgivable criminals are those who poach to feed hungry families and do not understand the consequences of their behavior.

Others poach for the trophy only. These big game hunters feel that displaying an animal head, its pelt or even an entire animal, stuffed, is an emblem of their prowess. This psychological need is the incentive for big game hunters everywhere and they are willing to pay large sums of money for the opportunity.

Some big game hunting is legal and promoted by regions who want the money for the license as well as the corollary money that may be spent by the hunter while visiting. What sometimes happens however is that unscrupulous guides, attracted by cash, circumvent regulations to help the hunter bag his trophy.

A notorious case caught the public eye not long ago when guides lured a famous and rather tame lion out of its preserve in the middle of the night, allowing a dentist from the Midwest to kill the lion with his silent crossbow [5]. How many incidents like this happen is unknown.

Most poach for money. Those who do the actual killing are from impoverished regions in Africa or Asia and will break the law for cash. In Mozambique, a poacher receives $5,000 for a rhino horn, a stupendous amount in an economy like Mozambique where a farmhand's wage is $100 a month [6].

It is estimated that the typical poacher, who may risk death for his crime, receives 5-10% of the retail value of the end product [7].

In addition to criminal syndicates mentioned in the introduction, others involved in the lucrative wildlife trade include rebel militias who trade ivory for guns or use monetary proceeds to fund their terrorist organizations [8].

Many commercial poachers who sell bush meat and fish to restaurants and grocers are in the business as well [9].

Rampant illegal fishing of the oceans and seas for commerce is a big problem and threatens the sustainability of all marine life [10].

It was estimated that one-third of seafood entering the United States was from illegal fishing, resulting in the US passing a rule in December 2016 requiring strict record keeping of where fish are caught [11].

A recent study of the Mediterranean Sea showed that 93% of studied species were over exploited, many on the verge of extinction [12].

And of course, corrupt government and military officials responsible for stewardship at animal reserves and for letting the illegal goods pass through border checkpoints are in it for the money and glory of power.

Where is poaching happening?

Poaching happens everywhere.

Rifle shots rang out yesterday in the surrounding woods in Virginia, though hunting season formally begins today. Poaching land animals for the black market however occurs primarily in Asian and African countries where the range of wild animals is broad and catching poachers is difficult.

Hiring a killer is easy in undeveloped countries where the poor and hungry are desperate to do any bidding for even the small portion of the profits they receive, risking the increasingly harsh consequences of getting caught. It is believed that half of the world's poaching is in Africa and of that, most in Zimbabwe, followed by Kenya [26].

This past May, the Kenyan Minister of Tourism and Wildlife announced that Kenya will fast-track a law to institute the death penalty for poaching [27].

Consumers are all across the world. Much focus has been on the Asian market for traditional Chinese medicine cures, but traditional Chinese medicine is popular throughout the world and endangered exotic animals are even sold as pets in the United States and Europe [28].

In preparation for a collaborative workshop with Interpol recently, the International Fund for Animal Welfare released a report showing that over only six weeks in 2017, researchers found nearly twelve thousand ads for live endangered animals and their parts for sale online in France, Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom [29].

Negative effects of poaching on local tourism

In economic terms, the extinction of a species can have a negative effect on local tourism. The area not only becomes less attractive to potential tourists, but it also means that there is an increased chance of "tourist boycott." A boycott could have a detrimental effect on a local economy since restaurants, hotels, rentals, and other attractions would suffer great losses in revenue.

To illustrate the potential impact, it is worth noting that sub-Saharan Africa attracted 33.8 million visitors in 2012. If Africa was to lose its iconic species, this would in turn create a huge financial impact on the continent, most likely resulting in job losses particularly in the tourism industry which currently employs around 8 million people.

Beyond the environment and the economy, poaching can have severe consequences on communities. Not only does it threaten traditional ways of living but it also relies on profiting from state weaknesses and corruption.

This creates an inherent interest among poachers and criminals in actively undermining state economic development - a particular problem in a number of already vulnerable countries in the developing world.

What animals get poached the most?

Pangolins

Pangolins, small shy creatures native to Asia and sub-Saharan Africa who root in the sandy earth for termites, are the most heavily trafficked mammals in the world, at 100,000 poached annually for the past decade and now nearing extinction [16].

They are poached primarily for their scales, which are ground and used in "traditional" Chinese medicinal concoctions for kidney ailments. Pangolin scales sell for $3,000 a kilogram on the black market.

Pangolin meat is also now considered a delicacy among wealthy Vietnamese.

Elephants

Elephants are poached for ivory.

Despite public attention and widespread efforts to stop the slaughter, 100 elephants are illegally killed each day for their ivory tusks [17]. Hopefully, China's recent trade ban on ivory products will result in a further decline of the numbers [18].

Rhinos

Rhinos are also poached for their horns [19].

Rhinoceros horn, also admired for its luster, has been used over the centuries as ornamentation: in ceremonial cups, belt buckles and more recently, until outlawed in 1982 it was inlaid in ceremonial daggers presented to young Yemeni men as a passage rite into manhood and to show their devoutness to the Muslim religion.

More pervasive though, is their procurement for use in traditional Chinese medicine. Ground rhino horn has been used over the centuries for:

While it is harder to imagine the origin of the folklore when presented under the rubric of "traditional Chinese medicine," the marketing ploys generated by black market buccaneers of recent years are easier to picture.

For example, the notion of ground giraffe heads as a cure in the 1980s for HIV when no cure existed is a transparent stratagem of profiteers preying on the desperate.

All five of the rhinoceros species are threatened with extinction. The brutality of their slaughter is particularly egregious. Local poachers feed something to their slow, highly-visible prey to make them collapse. The poacher then runs toward the rhino with a chainsaw and saws the horn from the rhino's face while she is still alive.

Tigers

Tigers are one of the most sought-after of the big cats, desired for their gorgeous, iconic coats, symbolic of wealth and luxury. Clothing and tiger-skin rugs are popular in many parts of the world today.

Although tigers have been making a "comeback" due to preservation efforts, still today, less than 4,000 tigers remain in the wild across the entire Asian continent [21].

Gorillas

Every species of gorilla is on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List, considered the most comprehensive global inventory of animal and plant species [22,23].

Only 17% live in protected regions and while habitat destruction and disease are contributing to their decreasing numbers, the killing for bush meat trade has been increasing. It is estimated that only between 100,000 and 200,000 remain.

A United Nation report projects that they will disappear from the African Congo by the mid 2020s [24].

Gorillas share over 98% of their genetic code with humans.

Sea turtles

Tortoise-shell shades anyone?

The cost for looking like a movie star: the life of a hawksbill sea turtle.

Sea turtles, a key species in marine ecosystems for maintaining the health of sea grass beds and coral reefs are poached for their eggs, meat and shells.

The eggs are eaten as a delicacy and for their perceived value as a powerful aphrodisiac.

Expensive skin creams are made from their oils.

The meat too is considered a delicacy and is eaten in religious ceremonies. It is estimated that 5,000 turtles are consumed annually during a pre-Easter celebration in coastal communities of Mexico.

The shells used for jewelry and as decoration in musical instruments as well as ground for medicine.

Although they have been swimming the seas for the last million years, every species of turtle is endangered but the loggerhead, only recently removed from the endangered list as a result of intensive preservation efforts [25].

How does poaching affect the ecosystem?

An ecosystem is a unit of plants, animals, microorganisms and the non-living aspects, like the topography and weather of an environment. An ecosystem can be defined in different ways depending upon the aspect one is studying and can be very small: for example, one might be examining the microorganisms, fungi and bacteria and tiny soil organisms feeding on a single decomposing tree.

You have probably heard of wetlands ecosystems, often in the news because they are routinely drained and bulldozed over during development. Wetlands are home to many birds and aquatic life, as well as plants that provide water purification services.

Or perhaps you have read of the threats to the coral reef ecosystems. These ecosystems familiarly known as the rainforests of the sea for the abundant and varied marine life they sustain, are dying at an astounding rate due to pollution and warming waters.

These are concerns because ecosystems sustain key life and provide indispensable services to our biosphere, services which man is unable to replicate on the scale nature provides them.

An ecosystem provides habitats for the life it contains. In turn, the life within performs functions essential for a planet habitable for humans.

The web of life which comprises an ecosystem works in tandem to fertilize its soil, essential for growing food, to pollinate vegetation and crops, again, a process essential for food and for over two-thirds of modern medicines used in the United States [30], to detoxify polluted soil, water and air, necessary for human survival and to help stabilize climates.

For example, both the ocean and the rain forests act as a carbon sink, withdrawing excess greenhouse gas emissions from the atmosphere which would otherwise make the earth too hot and toxic for human survival.

Major ecosystems are recognizable as those which sustain forms of life within its temperature and humidity parameters.

Generally, six major ecosystems are recognized:

What if the poached animal is a keystone species?

In evaluating the integrity of an ecosystem, the threat to a keystone species is taken seriously. A keystone species as the name implies, is a species of plant or animal considered to play a pivotal role in holding the entire ecosystem in balance. The loss of a keystone species may mean the collapse of an ecosystem. The loss of an entire ecosystem may well have adverse and profound effects on the habitability of earth for humans.

Generally, a keystone species is one somewhere in the middle of a food chain or web. It is one, which if removed, is not quickly replaced by another which performs the same function within the web because there is no other species that can perform within its niche [31].

For example, a certain fish may be preyed upon by larger fish and prey upon smaller fish. If the entire species of that particular fish was subject to decimation, say by a disease, another species of fish that had been surviving in smaller numbers, may be able to expand its population and fill in the gap without upsetting the balance of the ecosystem. This is not the case with a keystone species.

It is unique and irreplaceable.

The full extent of relationships within the many ecosystems are complex and our knowledge is incomplete. Still, there are many relationships we have studied and scientists recognize keystone species in each of the ecosystems.

It is not the norm that a species at the top, or apex of a food web is a keystone species.

Obviously, homo sapiens dominate earth, but homo sapiens aside, looking at species in an endangered status due to poaching, three of the top six in this category - elephants, rhinos and gorillas are at the top of the food chain and considered keystone species in their regional ecosystems.

This is because of the unique and vital services each performs to sustain the natural balance of the ecosystem:

Pangolins
Pangolins perform a mighty task. A single pangolin digs through the earth, aerating and enriching the soil and eating an estimated 70 million insects annually, primarily ants and termites [32]. Not only is the pangolin sustaining the balance of its ecosystem, but is benefitting any humans in the area living in wood houses.

Rhinos and elephants
Savannas, a grassland, are best recognized by their diverse and plentiful animals: birds, insects, giraffes, gazelles, lions, rhinoceros, antelope, jackals, zebras and cheetahs. Rhinoceros, who selectively graze the vegetation and elephants, who consume leaves from the low broadleaf trees characterizing the savanna and available in the forest ecosystems some habit, are each considered keystone species for their unique services sustaining their ecosystems [33,34].
Where nutrients are found in the soil and how animals move them about has been found to have dramatic effects for the savanna, governing seasonal migration patterns, habitat differences and populations [35].

Gorillas
Gorilas, who live primarily in the forests, feed on fruit and bamboo, invertebrates and termites, are also considered a keystone species, providing among other services, the invaluable service of spreading seeds for more fruit trees [36].

Tigers
Tigers are a keystone species due to their large impact on keeping prey in check [37]. They live in varied habitats from grasslands to evergreen forests, rain forests and mangrove swamps throughout Asia, but wherever they roam, they need a large area.
A typical tiger consumes 88 pounds of meat a day. Due primarily to human population expansion, only about 7% of their historical natural habitat exists. People are afraid to live near tigers, which results in illegal killing and their now small range makes it easier for black market poachers to find and kill them.

Sea turtles
Sea turtles too are recognized as a keystone species in marine life [38].

Spread of deadly diseases

Trafficking in illegal wildlife is an international problem. The consequences of the wholesale depletion of key species from major ecosystems are global, threatening the health of our only biosphere.

Not touched upon above, but a problem we are only now recognizing the gravity of, is the emergence of zoonotic diseases, nearly uncontrollable diseases like SARS, Ebola, and HIV that are transferred from animals to humans [39].

Poached meat is provided under the radar of food safety enforcement. Many diseases can be transferred simply upon handling infected animals or their parts.

Wildlife trafficking crosses many country borders, often taking circuitous routes to avoid detection.

This means that many, many people come in contact with animals and animal parts that may be contaminated with a deadly virus easily spread and not easily contained.

For example, the outbreak of SARS in Hong Kong has been traced to human contact with poached meat available on black wildlife markets.

What can be done to stop poaching?

One hundred and eighty-three nations have signed the The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), pledging to fight the illegal and unsustainable wildlife trade under a uniform regulatory regime [40].

While collaborating to find a moving target poses its challenges, CITES has been working steadily toward a collaborative enforcement effort to increase enforcement and punishment of violators across member countries, recently founding the International Consortium on Combatting Wildlife Crime (ICCWC).

The ICCWC is a concerted effort between and among the CITES Secretariat, INTERPOL (international police), the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the World Bank and the World Customs Organization (WCO). Member nations have internal agencies responsible for implementing CITES goals within their borders. Dogs at airports are sniffing for animal parts as well as drugs.

As an example, the United States relies upon the US Fish and Wildlife Service's Divisions of Management Authority and Scientific Authority as well as its Office of Law Enforcement to enforce CITES within its borders.

Private and community conservation initiatives to save poached species

Private and non-profit organizations have sprung up all around the world to bring attention to the problem, some adopting programs and conservation efforts for a specific threatened animal.

For example, the actor Leonard Dicaprio sponsors a foundation to save the endangered snow leopard. Many other celebrities are helping raise awareness of the plight of endangered species due to poaching. Ian Somerhalder testified in front of a congressional hearing in support of the US ivory ban [41].

Public attention to the issue educates fans to the consequences of their buying choices and to the forces influencing their decisions. Accordingly, it can ease the way for passing legislation like the State of California's ban on ivory from illegally slaughtered elephants and rhinos, which was then unsuccessfully challenged in court by the innocuous-sounding private interest group, The Ivory Education Institute [42].

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has teamed with the IUCN to create TRAFFIC, the world's largest illegal trade monitoring network [43]. Animal reserve stewards and park rangers in many countries are charged with protecting the animals within its borders.

WWF trains local authorities in modern methods of anti-poaching like using thermal infrared camera monitoring to detect humans at night, using drones and GPS tags, and it provides equipment for anti-poaching teams in several nations [44,45].

Education is one of the ways to stop poaching and illegal wildlife trade

Many groups have found local education and recruitment of natives to the cause in areas where the animals are being poached are the most effective deterrents. The Save Vietnam's Wildlife Organization educates, rescues, rehabilitates and reintroduces pangolins into their habitats and the Tikki Hywood Trust trains local "Pangolin Men" to take care of rescued pangolins [46].

The Emerging Wildlife Conservation Leaders Pangolin Support Initiative focuses on workshops teaching local Cambodians about pangolins and the poaching happening around them [47].

Other groups focus more specifically on the market.

For example, the Humane Society International, is focusing on educating Vietnamese, the largest buyers of rhinoceros horn, to the brutality and consequences of the slaughter. They credit their campaign aimed at schoolchildren to university students to business people with a 38% decline in consumption in just one year.
Remove the demand and the suppliers will diminish.
Education and legislation banning consumption are more surefire solutions than hoping to catch criminals, who will, if the money is there, simply be replaced with more criminals.

References

[1] https://blogs.worldbank.org/voices/trafficking-wildlife-and-transmitting-disease-bold-threats-era-ebola
[2] Interpol pdf Global Wildlife Enforcement March 2018
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/aug/19/super-gangs-africa-poaching-crisis
[4] https://www.fws.gov/international/travel-and-trade/illegal-wildlife-trade.html
[5] https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/03/wildlife-watch-cecil-trophy-hunting-andrew-loveridge/
[6] https://www.ft.com/content/f71d53ea-67b3-11e5-97d0-1456a776a4f5
[7] http://www.poachingfacts.com/
[8] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/africa/wildlife-poaching-brings-unimaginable-consequences-n391976
[9] http://www.poachingfacts.com/faces-of-the-poachers/commercial-poachers/
[10] https://worldoceanreview.com/en/wor-2/fisheries/illegal-fishing/
[11] https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/illegal-fishing
[12] https://phys.org/news/2017-04-state-mediterranean-fish-stocks.html
[13] http://www.poachingfacts.com/faces-of-the-poachers/military-corrupt-officials/
[14] https://greentumble.com/why-are-pangolins-endangered/
[15] https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/most-poached-animals-world-environment-day/
[16] https://greentumble.com/why-are-pangolins-endangered/
[17] http://worldelephantday.org/
[18] https://www.traffic.org/news/chinas-ivory-trade-ban-workshop-held-on-the-achievement-and-challenges/
[19] http://www.hsi.org/issues/rhinoceros_poaching/
[20] http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/rhinoceros-rhino-horn-use-fact-vs-fiction/1178/
[21] https://sciencing.com/role-tigers-ecosystem-7638501.html
[22] http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/9404/0
[23] https://www.iucn.org/resources/conservation-tools/iucn-red-list-threatened-species
[24] https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/gorilla
[25] https://seeturtles.org/turtleshell-trade
[26] https: //prezi.com/_1jrz2jfgfip/where-does-most-poaching-happen/?webgl=0
[27] http://www.tourismupdate.co.za/article/180497/Kenya-says-Death-penalty-for-poachers
[28] https://theconversation.com/trading-in-extinction-how-the-pet-trade-is-killing-off-many-animal-species-71571
[29] https://www.ifaw.org/africa/news/interpol-ifaw-co-host-cross-sector-workshop-address-cyber-enabled-wildlife-crime
[30] https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/publications/papers/Medicinal_Plants_042008_lores.pdf
[31] https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/keystone-species/
[32] https://www.pangolins.org/2011/11/01/pangolins-natural-pest-controllers-and-soil-caretakers/
[33] https://www.nikela.org/why-rhinos-are-critical-to-african-ecosystems/
[34] https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/keystone-species/
[35] https://ecology-safari.blogspot.com
[36] https://deforestationofvirunga.weebly.com/keystone-species.html
[37] https://en.wwfchina.org/en/what_we_do/species/fs/amurtiger/
[38] http://www.bonaireturtles.org/wp/explore/are-sea-turtles-worth-saving/
[39] https://www.raredr.com/news/wildlife-trade-infectious
[40] https://www.cites.org/eng/disc/parties/index.php
[41] http://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/celebrities-fighting-to-end-the-illegal-wildlife-trade/
[42] http://www.humanesociety.org/news/press_releases/2016/11/california-court-upholds-ivory-ban-112916.html?credit=web_id855413
[43] https://www.traffic.org/news/traffic-iucn-and-wwf-renew-partnership/
[44] https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/new-anti-poaching-technology-leads-to-dozens-of-arrests-of-wildlife-criminals-in-africa
[45] https://www.worldwildlife.org/projects/wildlife-crime-technology-project
[46] https://www.lifegonewild.org/mywildlife/2018/4/4/coming-together-to-save-pangolins
[47] http://wildlifeleaders.org/projects/pangolins/

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Devastating Consequences of Wildlife Poaching | Greentumble

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The consequences of poaching to wildlife are not only devastating; they are also pervasive. It is the second-biggest threat to species after habitat destruction.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
But illegal poaching might destroy it forever.

Where do we stand?

BLACK RHINO: POPULATION DOWN 97.6% SINCE 1960

MOUNTAIN GORILLA: FEWER THAN 900 REMAIN

AFRICAN ELEPHANT: UP TO 35,000 KILLED LAST YEAR

LION: EXTINCT IN SEVEN AFRICAN COUNTRIES

GREVY'S ZEBRA: APPROXIMATELY 2,000 REMAIN

Why are these animals killed?

Endangered animals are slaughtered so that a single body part - like tusks, pelt, or bones - can be illegally sold for huge sums of money.

RHINO HORN is believed to treat: hangovers, ipotence, fever, cancer

proven to cure: none of the above

the demand for rhino horn is exceedingly high on the black market; and is even valued more than gold.

ivory is carved into: jewlery, utensils, religious figurines, trinkets. worth the life of an elephant? no. Illegal ivory can fetch a high price on the black market and can make a quick profit if the products can be traded in volume.

Zebras are hunted for their skins. They are also occasionally used for meat or medicine.

Wildlife officials have observed a recent surge in trafficking of infant gorillas. They are sold for up to $40,000.

Due to recent habitat loss, many lions live close to humans and are killed by farmers in retaliation for preying on livestock.

How did this happen?

The vast majority of poaching is caused by organized crime syndicates that use high-powered technology and weaponry to track and kill many animals at once without being detected.

ak-47s, grenade launchers, night-vision goggles, gps & low-flying helicopters

What does this mean for Africa?

vulnerable, endangered, critically endangered

at current paching rates, elephants, rhinos, and other iconic African wildlife may be gone within our lifetime.

what we're doing:

Protect Wildlife: We recruit, train, and equip our scouts with advanced tools like satellite phones, GPS, and all-terrain vehicles to help them safeguard animals.

Conserve Land: In tandem with anti-poaching efforts, we establish wildlife corridors - large sections of land that allow animals to move from one national park to another.

Educate the Public: We work with conservation groups and governments to raise awareness of poaching, illegal trading, and dwindling wildlife populations.

Provide Livelihood Alternatives: We work to provide alternative means of livelihood to local communities so wildlife is not harmed in order to sustain the local economy.

That's not all. To learn about our many ongoing efforts to protect Africa, visit: www.awf.org

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
But illegal poaching might destroy it forever. Where do we stand? BLACK RHINO: POPULATION DOWN 97.6% SINCE 1960 MOUNTAIN GORILLA: FEWER THAN 900 REMAIN AFRICAN ELEPHANT: UP TO 35,000 KILLED LAST YEAR LION: EXTINCT IN SEVEN AFRICAN COUNTRIES GREVY'S ZEBRA: APPROXIMATELY 2,000 REMAIN Why are these animals killed?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
When you think of poaching, do you think of a large animal with some sort of tusk, like an elephant or a rhino?Surprisingly the most poached animal in the world isn't large or tusky. It's a small and scaly creature called the pangolin.

The Pangolin is a small mammal covered in large overlapping scales made of Keratin (the same substance hair and fingernails are made of). A nocturnal animal, there are eight different varieties of pangolin. Generally found in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, their diet consists of ants and termites.

WORLD'S WEIRDEST: PANGOLIN With its giant digging claws, the pangolin is nature's backhoe. And a long, sticky tongue-capable of slurping up thousands of ants or termites every day-makes it the scourge of the bug world

Though they may look like weird-scaly anteaters they are actually not a part of the anteater family at all. In fact, they have no close relatives, they're completely unique.

So why are these creatures being so heavily poached?

It's all to do with the scales.

The pangolin's scales are used in traditional medicine, fashion and even eaten in high-end cuisine. Scientists have suggested that more than one million pangolins have been poached in the past decade.

Image: PHOTOGRAPH BY CEDRIC AND ELYANE JACQUET

"The threat is significant and escalating, "due to the high demand for consumption, they are disappearing," said Jeff Flocken North American director for the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

The amount of pangolins being killed annually makes it almost impossible to track their numbers. So there's no way of knowing just how many are left of the species.

The worst affected areas are China and South East Asia where the demand for the scaly creature has risen.

"Anything that is really rare and exotic is desirable. It's a symbol of wealth, anything seen to be delicacy is now in vogue" said Crawford Allan, senior director of the wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC at World Wildlife Fund.

11,000 pangolins have been trafficked in just the past three months. Last June 4.4 tonnes pf pangolin scales were confiscated. The shipment was estimated to contain 1,100 to 6,600 murdered African pangolins, valued at 1.25 million dollars.

Unfortunately, until the demand for pangolin decreases, there will always be a market for them.

"You can pour as much money as you want into enforcement, but so long as the demand is still there and the consumer market is there and the price is so high, the criminal networks will always find a way to poach animals and get these stolen gems of nature to the black market." Says Allan.

Header: PHOTOGRAPH BY CEDRIC AND ELYANE JACQUET

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What is the World's Most Poached Animal?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When you think of poaching, do you think of a large animal with some sort of tusk, like an elephant or a rhino?Surprisingly the most poached animal in the world isn't large or tusky. It's a small and scaly creature called the pangolin.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Here is a complicated problem: Endangered elephants live in isolated nature preserves under the watch of woefully underfunded governments. Poachers can easily break in, hunt the animals in the dark using night-vision goggles, and then sell them to buyers in Southeast Asia (often using the proceeds to buy arms for militias.) Arrayed against this complex, tragic situation is a curious coalition of local governments, non-governmental organizations, and robots.

The fundamental challenge of poaching is that there's more money to be made in killing and selling rare, exotic, and endangered animals than there is in protecting them. But drones operated by nonprofits could help stop this process by tracking poachers back to the traders that make poaching so profitable. And while non-government drones can't themselves apprehend illegal traders, they can direct local governments to the location of the criminals, says Carter Roberts of the World Wildlife Fund.

We're already beginning to see this nonprofit-drone/local government synthesis in action. On Thursday, President Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania announced that the Tanzanian army is deploying drones for anti-poaching operations. This isn't the first time Tanzania has used its army against poachers, but the last time was in 1989, and the problem has certainly re-emerged since then.

To make sure that this time the anti-poaching efforts actually stick, the Tanzania National Parks Authority will use drones to monitor people entering the parks. "It is a kind of improved closed-circuit television camera, which will facilitate monitoring all parks 24 hours," Shelutete told Sabahi, adding that the cameras are connected to computers via satellite.

In December, Google funded a WWF plan to use drones for protecting the world's rare, vulnerable, and endangered species. Now, it looks like similar plans are taking off elsewhere, as cheaper technology meets a pressing need that was just not affordable before. Plus, as Carter Roberts noted, "The places we're talking about are extremely remote-UAV privacy issues not that great [because] nobody's supposed to be there." Indeed, this looks like an ideal case of drones working for good.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How Drones Will Fight Poachers To Save Endangered Species

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Here is a complicated problem: Endangered elephants live in isolated nature preserves under the watch of woefully underfunded governments. Poachers can easily break in, hunt the animals in the dark using night-vision goggles, and then sell them to buyers in Southeast Asia (often using the proceeds to buy arms for militias.)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Along with habitat loss, poaching is one of the largest killers of animal populations in the world. It's become so prominent that it has become a $19 billion a year business - and endangered species are firmly in the poachers' crosshairs.

1. Leatherback Sea Turtles

Currently, all seven species of marine turtles are in danger of becoming extinct. Yet, somehow, it's still legal to capture and kill them in 42 different countries around the world. Over the last three decades an estimated 2 million sea turtles were killed both legally and by poachers.

Even outside of legal areas, poachers are responsible for illegally killing sea turtles in the thousands. These turtles are harvested for their eggs, meat and shells that are used for a variety of things, from medicine to decorations. Leatherback turtles in particular are targeted for their eggs, which are sold as aphrodisiacs. Only as estimated 34,000 leatherback females remain in the wild.

2. Tigers

( Flickr/John Picken)

With only around 3000-3200 left - and a mere 400 to 500 of them Siberian - tigers are on the fast track to extinction thanks highly in part to poachers. About 1,800 of the remaining tigers live in India and are distributed throughout 13 tiger reserves collectively known as the "Central Indian Tiger Landscape" while the rest are spread out in places like Siberia. Authorities routinely come across traps for the tigers along with poisonous weapons used to kill them.

A single tiger can bring in nearly $50,000 on the black market. Across Asia, nearly every part of their bodies is sold, but mostly for a traditional Chinese medicine known as tiger bone wine and for their skins, which are used for décor. Due to the poaching of tigers, overall populations have dropped from 100,000 a hundred years ago.

3. Javan Rhinoceros

( Flickr/indywriter)

The year 2013 marked the highest year in modern history for rhinoceros poaching with more than 1,000 of them being killed by poachers. White rhinos were targeted 1.5 times higher than in 2012 and the population is nearing the point at which more rhinos will be poached than born each year. Due to their small population, Indonesia's Javan rhinos are the most threatened.

In China and Vietnam, rhinoceros horns are treasured as status symbols and for health tonics due to the keratin in their horns. Demand for them actually drove Javan rhinos to extinction in Vietnam as of 2011 and now only 50 of them are estimated to live in the wild. As of September 10 of this year, 227 arrests have been made involving poachers in South Africa, a country that is home to 73 percent of all wild rhinos in the world.

The Amur leopard is the most critically endangered of all leopard species with approximately 35 remaining. They are hunted by poachers for their beautiful spotted fur, which is used in clothing and decorations, as well as for blankets throughout Asia and Russia. The leopards' habitat is located in a remote region of eastern Russia.

The Amur leopards are surrounded by local villages and towns, making them easily accessible to poachers and difficult to protect. Between 2007 and 2012 four of the few remaining leopards were found dead and were likely killed by poachers. While it might not seem like the highest number of deaths on the list, with such a small population, a handful of leopards being poached is detrimental to the species' survival and repopulation.

5. Northern Sportive Lemurs

( Flickr/wallygrom)

Ninety-four percent of the world's lemurs are threatened by extinction, but the worst of the lot happens to be the northern sportive lemur. There are currently between 20 and 50 of them left in the wild. The lemurs reside entirely on the island of Madagascar, along with about 100 other lemur species also in decline.

They weigh around two pounds and can be found in one remote area in the northern tip of the country. Poachers illegally hunt these guys due to the amount of protein in their bodies; that's right, they eat them. This is known as bushmeating, and grilled lemur is served as a delicacy. If not stopped, the northern sportive lemur could become the first primate to go extinct in the last 200 years.

6. Saolas

( Wikimedia Commons/Silviculture)

The saola has received the nickname "The Asian Unicorn" because it's so rarely seen, its existence is almost mythical. It was only first discovered 22 years ago, and is already at risk of disappearing entirely thanks to poachers.

Saola sightings are so rare that researchers estimate their population to be between a few dozen to possibly as high as 200. Poachers hunt and slaughter the saola for their horns. Due to the rarity of the species, saola horns are prized as trophies. There have been over 30,000 snares discovered in saola habitats since 2011.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
These Animals Are Nearly Extinct, And Still Being Poached

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Along with habitat loss, poaching is one of the largest killers of animal populations in the world. It's become so prominent that it has become a $19 billion a year business - and endangered species are firmly in the poachers' crosshairs. Currently, all seven species of marine turtles are in danger of becoming extinct.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
When most people think of wildlife poaching, they might picture violence against animals worlds away. But the consequences reach far beyond herds of elephants in Africa.

Lawmakers and wildlife experts will gather Thursday in Washington to discuss ways to curb poaching in Africa, including limiting demand for products like ivory and rhinoceros horns in the United States, China and elsewhere. The White House calls the sprawling market for threatened wildlife an international crisis.

"Poaching just escalated literally overnight," said Ginette Hemley, senior vice president of wildlife conservation at the World Wildlife Fund and one of four experts testifying at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.

Just one sobering statistic: More than 1,200 rhinos will be poached in South Africa this year, Hemley told NBC News, compared to the 13 that were illegally killed in 2007.

So why should Washington and Americans care?

Animal rights and the environment

Elephants, which are poached for ivory, and rhinos, which are poached for horns, are often at the forefront of conservation campaigns. But other animals are poached, too, including tigers for their skins and sharks for their fins.

Fewer than 3,500 tigers are left in the wild, said Kelly Aylward, the Wildlife Conservation Society's Washington office director.

The steady march to extinction faced by species around the world will expand outward, Aylward said, as endangered animals often play key roles in their ecosystems. For example, elephants eat brush, preventing it from overgrowing, and their excrement fertilizes the soil.

The rise of poaching "doesn't bode well for the future - how those interactive ecosystems will work without key species," Aylward said.

Safety and security

Cash-starved terrorist organizations have turned to trading ivory, which the Elephant League has dubbed "the white gold of jihad." The illegal wildlife trade nets $8 billion to $10 billion a year in all, according to the WWF.

A Global Financial Integrity report found that terrorist groups like the Rwandan Democratic Liberation Forces, which led the Rwandan genocide in the 1990s, and al Shabaab, responsible for the 2013 siege of a mall in Kenya, use huge profits from the ivory trade to pay for their violence.

And the money from ivory that isn't being funneled to the terrorist groups is destabilizing African countries by fostering government corruption, Hemley said.

"The value of the products from rhino horns and ivory is so great that there's a huge incentive to get involved," Hemley said.

The economy

Widespread corruption keeps away foreign investment and makes finding a legitimate livelihood difficult for many poachers, Aylward said.

To make matters worse, many African countries depend on wildlife to attract tourists.

Related: Drones Used to Stop Elephant and Rhino Poachers in Africa

When Obama visited Tanzania in 2013, he said wildlife is "inseparable from Africa's identity and prosperity." The country, where many people work in tourism and national parks, announced in June that 60 percent of its elephant population has been lost, Hemley said.

The consumer effect

Lawmakers in Thursday's hearing hope to get a better idea of where and how to allot money to fight wildlife poaching. But everyday people can also do their part.

It's illegal to import ivory in the United States but legal to buy it. "We are pushing the government to close that loophole to really stem the demand within our own market," Hemley said.

And sellers often falsely market illegally imported ivory as antique. If Americans stop buying ivory, other countries - including China, which has the biggest market - will follow suit, Aylward said.

"Being a consumer in the U.S. is actually a very powerful position to be in," she said. "In this global world, what Americans think about (ivory) could reflect on other cultures and likewise."

Related: U.S. Crushes 6 Tons of Illegal Ivory to Send Message to Poachers, Traffickers

Elephant tusks - the ivory from which is often used in musical instruments or jewelry and carved into trinkets - may have once been a symbol of "prestige and honor," but that perception needs to change, Aylward said.

Americans have the ability to stem the horrific environmental, economic, and safety effects of wildlife poaching if they "simply don't buy ivory," Hemley said. "We can't point the finger unless we clean up our own act."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Wildlife Poaching: 4 Reasons Why You Should Care About the Issue

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When most people think of wildlife poaching, they might picture violence against animals worlds away. But the consequences reach far beyond herds of elephants in Africa. Lawmakers and wildlife experts will gather Thursday in Washington to discuss ways to curb poaching in Africa, including limiting demand for products like ivory and rhinoceros horns in the United States, China and elsewhere.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
When the famous explorer Jacques Cousteau released The Silent World, a documentary of his underwater adventures in 1953, he inspired generations of scientists to study the world's oceans.

We now know that the underwater world is anything but silent. In fact, today's researchers are concerned that underwater noise produced by humans is distracting, confusing - and even killing - aquatic animals.

The underwater world is full of natural sounds that form a rich soundscape of rumbles, bubbles, grunts and clicks.

These sounds are produced by the motion of the atmosphere, water and seafloor, by animals and, now more than ever, by machines created by humans.

Nowadays, the underwater soundscape includes the roar of motors, the ping of military SONAR and the bangs and blasts from offshore development.

Communication breakdown

For fish, whales and other marine animals, intense underwater noises from blasts can cause acoustic trauma and even death. More common quieter noise, such as construction or shipping noise, may not kill the animals directly, but can disrupt their ability to find food, mates or avoid predators.

Maud Ferrari

A wide range of species use acoustic signals to communicate with each other. Marine fishes, for instance, are known to make chirps, pops, knocks and grunts using their teeth, swim bladders or fins.

One consequence of anthropogenic - humanmade - noise is a masking effect. When the noise is close to a fish, it reduces that individual's ability to hear the sounds of others. Noise also interferes with the sounds this individual produces, jamming communication.

School of noise

More and more, scientists are discovering that noise not only interferes with an animal's cognitive processing of sounds, but also other types of stimuli, such as sight or smell. For example, boat noise interferes with the visual signals that cuttlefish use to communicate with each other.

Recent research in our lab indicated that noise can also impair an animal's ability to process the chemical information released after a predator attack on shoal mates.

We looked at the effects of noise from small motorboats on coral-reef fishes at Lizard Island Research Station at the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. In the lab, we trained young damselfish to recognize the odour of the predatory dottyback as a threat. Some fish were trained in the presence of boat noise, while the others were trained with the ambient sound of the ocean.

(Maud Ferrari)

We found that fish trained with boat noise showed no fright reactions when they were exposed to the predator. It was as though they had had no preparation at all. The fish trained in the absence of boat noise, however, were scared. They reduced activity and foraging.

We taught another group of fish to recognize the smell and sight of three common predators - in the presence or absence of boat noise - and then we released them back into the wild.

School is out

It turns out that fish don't learn very well in noisy environments. After three days, only 20 per cent of the fish exposed to boat noise were still alive, compared to almost 70 per cent of unexposed fish.

We often think of the ways climate change, overfishing and run-off pollution threaten fish populations in the Great Barrier Reef, but our study adds to the growing evidence that boat noise may also contribute to fish death through a failure to learn.

Boat noise can have a variety of negative impacts on fishes. It can change their activity, force them to live in bad habitats and decrease their ability to feed, defend their territory, reproduce and avoid predators.

In some places, such as biodiversity hotspots or sensitive habitats, it may be prudent to create rules or laws that minimize the impacts of noise. Approaches to mitigate the effects of boat noise may include the implementation of quiet zones, speed restrictions or the use of mufflers or low-volume engine models. For example, quiet zones were recently implemented in British Columbia to protect a population of killer whales.

Humans rely on the ocean for its biodiversity and natural resources. It also plays a fundamental role in regulating atmospheric temperatures and gases. Cousteau cared deeply about ocean conservation and was gravely concerned about ocean pollution and the over-harvest of marine life. Today's seas continue to face these threats, as well as from habitat destruction, warming and ocean acidification.

These ocean threats are also human threats.

As Cousteau said, "For most of history, man has had to fight nature to survive; in this century he is beginning to realize that, in order to survive, he must protect it."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The fishy problem of underwater noise pollution

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When the famous explorer Jacques Cousteau released The Silent World, a documentary of his underwater adventures in 1953, he inspired generations of scientists to study the world's oceans. We now know that the underwater world is anything but silent. In fact, today's researchers are concerned that underwater noise produced by humans is distracting, confusing - and even killing - aquatic animals.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
An international group of scientists is calling for stricter regulations to protect marine wildlife from noise pollution. In a study published last week in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, researchers argue that action is needed to tackle excessive ocean noise from industrial activities such as shipping and seismic surveys, which use loud sound pulses fired from compressed air guns to explore the sea floor and find natural resources.

Nature asked two authors of the study, conservation ecologists Douglas Nowacek at the Duke University Marine Laboratory in Beaufort, North Carolina, and Howard Rosenbaum at the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York City, why this is such an urgent problem. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How does noise pollution harm marine life?
Douglas Nowacek (DN): One concern is hearing damage in animals. That can happen either with very loud sounds or over longer periods of exposure to lower levels of noise. Also, with air guns, the reverberations raise the background noise level and so risk masking animals' communication and navigation signals. A final concern is stress. Short-term stress is not that big a deal, but long-term stress is really detrimental. It causes physiological and reproductive problems; and we don't know a lot about how sensitive marine animals are to it.

Howard Rosenbaum (HR): Effects have been documented across a range of species, from bowhead whales in the Arctic and sperm whales in the Gulf of Mexico, to herring in the North Sea. There are still questions out there about what these impacts mean in the long term for individual animals or populations, but there's an increasing body of evidence.
Don't industries already have to take measures to limit possible damage to marine life?
HR: The requirements vary from region to region. In many places around the world, surveyors must slowly ramp up the air-gun strength at the beginning of a survey, to warn off animals in the area, but we really don't know how effective this practice is. Surveyors might be required to limit their operations in areas where endangered animals are present or have been previously observed, and shut down if animals enter a certain zone. The overall benefits from many of these measures are still really unknown. We feel that more needs to be done to safeguard marine species and their most important habitats.
What do you suggest?
DN: First, we are calling for restrictions on activities in biologically sensitive habitats, based on data. In an ideal world, you would want to have a good inventory of data on the marine animals present in a region and when these animals breed, spawn and feed. Then you would use that information to decide when to survey, and check afterwards whether there had been any unforeseen outcomes. Second, we want overall noise limits based on monitoring that counts cumulative contributions to noise. The Australian Ocean Data Network Portal is a good example of this kind of data collection. The European Union has proposed putting limits on overall noise, but the United States doesn't consider the cumulative impact of all activities when giving out survey permits.

HR: Third, there are already new techniques that use steady streams of energy at lower levels than air guns and which might help to reduce risks to marine species. Fourth, we think that intergovernmental science coordination is critical because it's a transboundary problem. Finally, we want to see the effects of cumulative noise incorporated into environmental-impact assessments.
Should some seismic surveying be banned?
DN: No. For the foreseeable future, seismic is a tool being used to find oil and gas at sea and, at lower amplitudes, to site wind farms, but you need to use it wisely. In the United States, the issue of redundant surveys is ridiculous. I can tell you from my experience of being out on the water in the Gulf of Mexico-on any given day, there may be 6, 8, 10 or 12 surveys going on nearby.

For the Atlantic, the US authorities are considering whether to permit multiple companies to carry out exploratory seismic surveys off the coast. One of the affected regions near Cape Hatteras happens to be the most diverse and richest area for cetaceans in the northwest Atlantic. To go out there and survey the same piece of water over and over again is ridiculous. Norway has instituted multi-client surveys, in which companies that are interested in seismic data from a particular area get together so that only one survey is done.
How will you persuade the international community to agree on regulations?
DN: The EU's Marine Strategy Framework Directive is trying to limit overall noise to a certain level, taking into account all sources. They are currently taking an inventory of shipping noise in many areas, with plans to then seek methods to reduce the noise, particularly in biologically sensitive areas. We are earnestly looking for a forum, or a way to start talking about this and to create some standards internationally. One possible way of creating a legally binding instrument to restrict noise pollution to an acceptable level is to add an annex for noise pollution to MARPOL [the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships], similar to the newly added annex on air pollution.
Do you think industry and regulatory authorities will agree with your recommendations?
HR: We are presenting peer-reviewed science that shows the extent of the issue. Industry or governments may not fully agree with what we suggest is a responsible way forward, but it's something that we feel could be very beneficial for industry and regulators as well-especially a standard set of 'best practices' for mitigating impacts on marine species and their habitats.
This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on September 11, 2015.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Marine Life Needs Protection from Noise Pollution

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
An international group of scientists is calling for stricter regulations to protect marine wildlife from noise pollution. In a study published last week in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, researchers argue that action is needed to tackle excessive ocean noise from industrial activities such as shipping and seismic surveys, which use loud sound pulses fired from compressed air guns to explore the sea floor and find natural resources.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Marine Bioacoustics / Human Noise OCR seeks to understand the impacts of human generated noise on marine life - using our understanding to inform ocean policy and practice.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
It is identified as a main threat to 85% of all species described in the IUCN's Red List (those species officially classified as "Threatened" and "Endangered").

Increasing food production is a major agent for the conversion of natural habitat into agricultural land.

Why is it happening?

Forest loss and degradation is mostly caused by the expansion of agricultural land, intensive harvesting of timber, wood for fuel and other forest products, as well as overgrazing.

High land conversion rates

The net loss in global forest area during the 1990s was about 94 million ha (equivalent to 2.4% of total forests). It is estimated that in the 1990s, almost 70% of deforested areas were converted to agricultural land.

Around half of the world's original forests have disappeared, and they are still being removed at a rate 10x higher than any possible level of regrowth. As tropical forests contain at least half the Earth's species, the clearance of some 17 million hectares each year is a dramatic loss.

Coastal and marine areas

Human impact on terrestrial and marine natural resources results in marine and coastal degradation. Population growth, urbanization, industrialization and tourism are all factors.

In 1994, it was estimated that 37% of the global population lived within 60 km of the coast. Poverty, consumption and land-use patterns contribute to the degradation of marine habitats and to the destruction of the species that rely on them to survive.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
It is identified as a main threat to 85% of all species described in the IUCN's Red List (those species officially classified as "Threatened" and "Endangered"). Increasing food production is a major agent for the conversion of natural habitat into agricultural land. Why is it happening?