Environment

Rare Malayan tiger cub makes debut appearance at Florida zoo

TAMPA, Florida (Reuters) — Three months after her birth, a rare Malayan tiger cub emerged from her den on Wednesday (December 14) at Tampa’s Lowry Park Zoo, The cub, named Berisi, was born on September 11 and spent the beginning of her life in the den with her mother, Bzui. The cub raced around the enclosure, pouncing on her mother and climbing rocks. Zoo officials said there were only about 250 Malayan tigers left in […]

Lions in Zimbabwe reserve most threatened by humans: research

by Fanuel JONGWE Agence France-Presse Lions living in the Zimbabwean reserve that was home to “Cecil the lion” are most threatened by human behavior, including trophy hunting, researchers said Monday. Cecil was shot by an American trophy hunter in 2015, sparking outrage after it emerged that the lion was not only a popular attraction for Hwange National Park visitors, but was also part of an Oxford University research project. Human activity including trophy hunting accounted for […]

Whales in the wild: rare gem amid Thailand mass tourism

by Delphine THOUVENOT Agence France-Presse GULF OF THAILAND, Thailand (AFP) — Piercing the water’s surface with its almond-shaped mouth, a giant Bryde’s whale opens wide for one, two, three seconds, gulping in anchovies as a boatload of awed tourist look on in the Gulf of Thailand. It’s a rare glimpse of marine life in its natural habitat, in a kingdom overrun with mass tourist attractions such as aquariums and dolphin shows. Once a dream for scuba […]

Global warming is melting mountain glaciers: study

MIAMI, United States (AFP) — Global warming is responsible for the melting of mountain glaciers around the world in the last century, scientists said Monday. Since glaciers respond slowly to climate change and are susceptible to yearly weather changes, there has been some debate in the scientific community about whether climate change was entirely to blame for their ice melt. For instance, the last report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded only […]

Million dollar dino sells at auction in France

LYON, France (AFP) — A nearly complete dinosaur skeleton sold for more than one million euros at auction in the eastern French city of Lyon late Saturday, the Aguttes auction house said. The Allosaurus, a ferocious carnivore named Kan whose species went extinct some 135 million years ago, fetched 1.1 million euros ($1.2 million), Aguttes said. Discovered in 2013 in the Jurassic Era Morrison Formation in the western United States, the specimen is more than 7.5 […]

Giraffes ‘threatened with extinction’

PARIS, France (AFP) – by Marlowe HOOD Wild giraffe numbers have plummeted by 40 percent in the last three decades, and the species is now “vulnerable” to extinction, a top conservation body warned Thursday. The population of the world’s tallest land mammal dropped to below 100,000 in 2015, mainly due to shrinking habitat and illegal hunting, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) reported. The group added 742 newly-discovered birds to the global […]

A black bear cub gets stuck in tree near a North Carolina apartment building

NORTH CAROLINA, Unite States (Reuters) — Residents in Washington, North Carolina woke up on Wednesday (December 7) to find a black bear cub hanging out in a tree near their apartment building, NBC reported. Local media said it was not unusual to see black bears in trees in the area and that they eventually come down at night time and leave, but animal control officers remained in the neighborhood to ensure the residents and the […]

Solar panels repay their energy ‘debt’: study

by Mariëtte Le Roux PARIS, France (AFP) — The climate-friendly electricity generated by solar panels in the past 40 years has all but cancelled out the polluting energy used to produce them, a study said Tuesday. Indeed, by some calculations, the so-called “break-even point” between dirty energy input and clean output may already have arrived, researchers in the Netherlands reported. “We show strong downward trends of environmental impact” of solar panel production, the team wrote […]

Polar bear numbers to plunge a third as sea ice melts: study

by Marlowe HOOD PARIS, France ( AFP ) – Polar bear numbers could drop a third by mid-century, according to the first systematic assessment, released Wednesday, of how dwindling Arctic sea ice affects the world’s largest bear. There is a 70 percent chance that the global polar bear population –- estimated at 26,000 -– will decline by more than 30 percent over the next 35 years, a period corresponding to three generations, the study found. Other assessments have […]

Earth’s days getting longer, slower: study

PARIS, France (AFP) — Earth’s days are getting longer but you’re not likely to notice any time soon — it would take about 6.7 million years to gain just one minute, according to a study published on Wednesday. Over the past 27 centuries, the average day has lengthened at a rate of about +1.8 milliseconds (ms) per century, a British research team concluded in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A. This was “significantly […]

Canada caribou and monarch butterfly “endangered”: experts

OTTAWO, Canada (AFP) — Canada’s caribou population has reached “all-time low” levels, particularly in the eastern Arctic, where the animal was classified as endangered Monday along with the monarch butterfly, according to a committee of scientific experts. “Caribou are, sadly, very sensitive to human disturbances, and we are disturbing caribou more and more,” Justina Ray said in a report by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (Cosewic). “These stressors seem to be […]