KOLKATA, India (Reuters) - The number of tiger attacks on people is growing in India’s Sundarban islands as habitat loss and dwindling prey caused by climate change drives them to prowl into villages for food, experts said Monday.

Wildlife experts say endangered tigers in the world’s largest reserve are turning on humans because rising sea levels and coastal erosion are steadily shrinking the tigers’ natural habitat.

The Sundarbans, a 26,000 sq km (10,000 sq mile) area of low-lying swamps on India’s border with Bangladesh, is dotted with hundreds of small islands criss-crossed by water channels.

“In the past six months, seven fishermen were killed in an area called Netidhopani,” Pranabes Sanyal of the World Conservation Union said. Read the rest of this entry »

Debates around the potential benefits of GM crops for developing countries must be reasoned and evidence-based, says Albert Weale.

The World Bank recently estimated that a doubling of food prices over the last three years could push 100 million people in low-income countries deeper into poverty. And the future does not look brighter. Food prices, although likely to fall from their current peaks, are predicted to remain high over the next decade.

As the world considers how to respond, the debate about genetically modified (GM) crops has inevitably reared its ugly head. ‘Ugly’ because the public exchange about this technology has usually seen extreme viewpoints gaining the most airtime. For example, in the United Kingdom, Prince Charles’ spirited but ill-informed attack on GM crops this summer led to a flurry of opinionated responses. We could have been back in the polarised debates of the earlier part of this decade. Read the rest of this entry »

OSLO (Reuters) - Almost half the world’s monkeys and apes are facing a worsening threat of extinction because of deforestation and hunting for meat, an international report showed on Tuesday.

“We have solid data to show that the situation is far more severe than we imagined,” said Russell Mittermeier, president of Conservation International and head of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) primate specialist group.

An assessment for an IUCN “Red List” of endangered species found that 48 percent of the 634 known species and sub-species of primates, humankind’s closest relatives such as chimpanzees, orangutans, gibbons and lemurs, were at risk of extinction. Read the rest of this entry »

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A red-breasted bird discovered by accident in the forests of Gabon is a new species, U.S. scientists said on Friday.

They have named the little bird the olive-backed forest robin, or Stiphrornis pyrrholaemus, but say they know little about it yet.

The Smithsonian Institution team found the bird while visiting the forest on a biodiversity project, said Brian Schmidt, a research ornithologist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

“I suspected something when I found the first bird in Gabon since it didn’t exactly match any of the species descriptions in the field guides,” Schmidt said in a statement. Read the rest of this entry »

World Environment Day, commemorated each year on 5 June, is one of the principal vehicles through which the United Nations stimulates worldwide awareness of the environment and enhances political attention and action.

The World Environment Day slogan for 2008 is Kick the Habit! Towards a Low Carbon Economy. Recognising that climate change is becoming the defining issue of our era, UNEP is asking countries, companies and communities to focus on greenhouse gas emissions and how to reduce them. The World Environment Day will highlight resources and initiatives that promote low carbon economies and life-styles, such as improved energy efficiency, alternative energy sources, forest conservation and eco-friendly consumption.

The main international celebrations of World Environment Day 2008 will be held in New Zealand. UNEP is honoured that the city of Wellington will be hosting this United Nations day (read the press release).

The day’s agenda is to give a human face to environmental issues; empower people to become active agents of sustainable and equitable development; promote an understanding that communities are pivotal to changing attitudes towards environmental issues; and advocate partnership, which will ensure all nations and peoples enjoy a safer and more prosperous future.

When did it all begin?

World Environment Day was established by the United Nations General Assembly in 1972 to mark the opening of the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment. Another resolution, adopted by the General Assembly the same day, led to the creation of UNEP.

How can you celebrate World Environment Day?

The World Environment Day Alphabet - 80 Ways to Celebrate
World Environment Day can be celebrated in many ways, including street rallies, bicycles parades, green concerts, essay and poster competitions in schools, tree planting, recycling efforts, clean-up campaigns and much more. In many countries, this annual event is used to enhance political attention and action.

Heads of State, Prime Ministers and Ministers of Environment deliver statements and commit themselves to care for the Earth. Serious pledges are made which lead to the establishment of permanent governmental structures dealing with environmental management and economic planning. This observance also provides an opportunity to sign or ratify international environmental conventions.

On this World Environment Day, let us examine the state of our environment. Let us consider carefully the actions which each of us must take, and then address ourselves to our common task of preserving all life on earth in a mood of sober resolution and quiet confidence.

World biodiversity has declined by almost one third in the past 35 years due mainly to habitat loss and the wildlife trade, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said on Friday

It warned that climate change would add increasingly to the wildlife woes over the next three decades.

“Biodiversity underpins the health of the planet and has a direct impact on all our lives so it is alarming that despite of an increased awareness of environmental issues we continue to see a downtrend trend,” said WWF campaign head Colin Butfield.

“However, there are small signs for hope and if government grasps what is left of this rapidly closing window of opportunity, we can begin to reverse this trend.”

WWF’s Living Planet Index tracks some 4,000 species of birds, fish, mammals, reptiles and amphibians globally. It shows that between 1970 and 2007 land-based species fell by 25 percent, marine by 28 percent and freshwater by 29 percent. Read the rest of this entry »

Global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the burning of fossil fuels stood at a record 8.38 gigatons of carbon (GtC) in 2006, 20 percent above the level in 2000. Emissions grew 3.1 percent a year between 2000 and 2006, more than twice the rate of growth during the 1990s. Carbon dioxide emissions have been growing steadily for 200 years, since fossil fuel burning began on a large scale at the start of the Industrial Revolution. But the growth in emissions is now accelerating despite unambiguous evidence that carbon dioxide is warming the planet and disrupting ecosystems around the globe.

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A small greenish bird that has been playing hide-and-seek with ornithologists on a remote Indonesian island since 1996 was declared a newly discovered species on Friday and promptly recommended for endangered lists.

The new species is called the Togian white-eye, or Zosterops somadikartai.

It was first spotted by Mochamad Indrawan of the University of Indonesia and his colleague Sunarto, who like many Indonesians uses one name. Read the rest of this entry »

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Climate change might be causing reef fish to get lost, unable to return to breeding grounds from the open ocean, which could have profound implications for the survival of reef ecosystems, Australian scientists say.

Climate change-induced environmental stress, including warmer and more acidic seawater, could be hindering the development of the ear bones in young reef fish, which rely on sound for navigation, the marine experts said on Friday.

The scientists from the James Cook University and the Australian Institute of Marine Science found that fish with asymmetrical ear bones struggle to return to their home reef. Read the rest of this entry »