by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 14, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Climate Change, Lobbying
By ENews Park Forest
Without help, more than 50 coral species in U.S. waters are likely to go extinct by the end the century, primarily because of ocean warming, disease and ocean acidification, a government report said today. The National Marine Fisheries Service released a status review of 82 corals that are being considered for protections under the Endangered Species Act following a 2009 petition by the Center for Biological Diversity.
“Coral reefs are at real risk of vanishing in our lifetimes if we don’t act fast,” said Miyoko Sakashita, oceans director with the Center for Biological Diversity. “The Endangered Species Act has saved hundreds of species from extinction, but these corals will only benefit if they’re actually protected.”
Of the 82 corals, 56 are likely to be extinct before 2100, the report said. The corals are in U.S. waters, ranging from Florida and Hawaii to U.S. territories in the Caribbean and Pacific. The report notes that the seven Florida and Caribbean corals are extremely likely to go extinct, and five of those corals ranked in the top seven of most imperiled overall. Today’s report makes no recommendation about whether the corals may warrant protection under the Endangered Species Act.
According to the status review, “The combined direct and indirect effects of rising temperature, including increased incidence of disease and ocean acidification, both resulting primarily from anthropogenic increases in atmospheric CO2, are likely to represent the greatest risks of extinction to all or most of the candidate coral species over the next century.”
Coral reefs are home to 25 percent of marine life and play a vital function in ocean ecosystems. Already one-third of the world’s coral reefs have been destroyed, and scientists warn that by mid-century most corals will be in inhospitable waters that are too warm or acidic. Since the 1990s, coral growth has grown sluggish in some areas due to ocean acidification, and mass bleaching events are increasingly frequent.
“I’m eager to show my kids the wonder of a coral reef. I worry that if we wait too long, they’ll never get to experience a healthy reef teeming with colorful life,” said Sakashita. “These delicate corals need help, first with federal protections, and then with dramatic reductions in carbon dioxide pollution.”
The Fisheries Service is accepting comments on the coral status review and management reports until July 31, 2012. Pursuant to a settlement agreement with the Center, the Fisheries Service will make a determination on whether listing is warranted for the corals by Dec. 1, 2012. In 2006, the Center secured protection for staghorn and elkhorn corals, making them the first — and so far, only — corals listed under the Endangered Species Act.
From ENews Park Forest
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 12, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Climate Change
By Craig Welch / The Seattle Times
Researchers said Wednesday they have conclusive evidence that ocean acidification is at least partly responsible for killing oysters on the West Coast.
It’s been eight years since baby oysters started dying by the billions at an Oregon hatchery and in Washington’s Willapa Bay.
In 2009, top scientists drew global attention when they said evidence suggested the culprit might be changing ocean chemistry from the same greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. They just couldn’t prove it — until now.
Researchers said Wednesday they can definitively show that ocean acidification is at least partly responsible for massive oyster die-offs at the hatchery in Netarts Bay, Ore.
It’s the first concrete finding in North America that carbon dioxide being taken up by the oceans already is helping kill marine species.
“This is the smoking gun for oyster larvae,” said Richard Feely, an oceanographer and leading marine-chemistry researcher with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle and one of the paper’s authors.
Said Alan Barton, another of the paper’s authors: “It’s now an incontrovertible fact that ocean chemistry is affecting our larvae.”
In a paper published this week in the journal Limnology and Oceanography, the scientists studied the water that gets pumped from the Pacific Ocean into the Whiskey Creek Hatchery, which supplies baby shellfish for most of the West Coast’s $110 million-a-year oyster industry.
Here’s why: Since 2005, wild oysters along the Washington coast and at the hatchery had been dying inexplicably in their larval stages. At first the suspect was a bacterial disease, but hatchery workers soon noticed that the die-offs only occurred after high winds drew water from the ocean deep.
Unlike the complex mechanics of climate change, ocean acidification is just basic chemistry. Scientists long had predicted that as carbon dioxide from fossil fuels gets taken up by the seas, ocean waters — typically slightly alkaline — would slide closer to the acidic side of the pH scale. They just expected it would take 50 to 100 years.
But Feely and other top researchers in 2007 and 2008 had discovered that the pH of marine waters along the West Coast had dropped decades earlier than expected.
Read more from The Seattle Times
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 11, 2012 | Mining & Drilling, Toxification
By Karrie Gillett / Press Association
Sixty-nine oil and chemical spills in the North Sea have been reported in three months. Eighteen companies were named in a table published by the Department of Energy and Climate Change. The most recent incident was a gas leak at Total’s Elgin platform on 25 March.
Professor Andrew Watterson, the head of the occupational and environmental health research group at the University of Stirling, accused companies of playing down “the potentially catastrophic consequences” of gas and oil leaks. “These are very worrying figures that cannot be slicked over by government agencies and industry,” he said. He blamed “corporate failures” for polluting the sea, and pointed out that the number of reported chemical leaks had more than doubled since 2005.
Oil & Gas UK, which represents offshore companies, said the leaks were “relatively small” and many of the chemicals “benign”. BP and Shell were among the firms listed, with BP reporting the highest number of incidents at 23. Other companies included EnQuest, British Gas and Nexen.
From The Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/north-sea-spills-on-the-rise-7627548.html
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 10, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Mining & Drilling
By New Zealand Herald
The death of about 3000 dolphins on a stretch of Peruvian coast in recent months is being blamed on a controversial oil exploration technique.
However other experts are not convinced, and believe a virus or pathogen may be responsible for one of the largest dolphin die-offs recorded.
So far this year, thousands of dolphins have washed up on a 135km stretch of coastline in Lambayeque, in northwestern Peru.
Numbers differ between reports, with some reporting more than 3000 of the mammals have been found dead in the past three months. Others have the figure around 2800.
Ninety percent of the dead are long-beaked common dolphins, while the remainder are Burmeister’s porpoises.
Veterinarian Carlos Yaipen, director of Lima’s Scientific Organisation for the Conservation of Aquatic Animals told Peru21 the deaths were the result of sonar testing for oil.
“The oil companies use different frequencies of acoustic waves and the effects produced by these bubbles are not plainly visible, but they generate effects later in the animals.
That can cause death by acoustic impact, not only in dolphins, but also in marine seals and whales,” Yaipen said.
All of 20 of the mammals Yaipen examined had middle ear hemorrhaging, fractures to the ear’s periotic bone, lung lesions and bubbles in the blood. Yaipen said this indicated the animals were injured but still alive when they beached.
According to a report in the Environmental Health News, oil exploration has been undertaken in the region, however it is not known whether seismic testing was underway.
Peter Ross, a research scientist at Canada’s Institute of Ocean Sciences in Sidney, British Columbia, told the Environmental Health News stress or toxic contaminants may have made the dolphins more vulnerable to pathogens. He said there may be two or three factors responsible for the deaths.
From New Zealand Herald: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10797875
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 10, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, NEWS
By Oregon State University
A survey on the loss in the Northern Hemisphere of large predators, particularly wolves, concludes that current populations of moose, deer, and other large herbivores far exceed their historic levels and are contributing to disrupted ecosystems.
The research, published today by scientists from Oregon State University, examined 42 studies done over the past 50 years.
It found that the loss of major predators in forest ecosystems has allowed game animal populations to greatly increase, crippling the growth of young trees and reducing biodiversity. This also contributes to deforestation and results in less carbon sequestration, a potential concern with climate change.
“These issues do not just affect the United States and a few national parks,” said William Ripple, an OSU professor of forestry and lead author of the study. “The data from Canada, Alaska, the Yukon, Northern Europe and Asia are all showing similar results. There’s consistent evidence that large predators help keep populations of large herbivores in check, with positive effects on ecosystem health.”
Densities of large mammalian herbivores were six times greater in areas without wolves, compared to those in which wolves were present, the researchers concluded. They also found that combinations of predators, such as wolves and bears, can create an important synergy for moderating the size of large herbivore populations.
“Wolves can provide food that bears scavenge, helping to maintain a healthy bear population,” said Robert Beschta, a professor emeritus at OSU and co-author of the study. “The bears then often prey on young moose, deer or elk – in Yellowstone more young elk calves are killed by bears than by wolves, coyotes and cougars combined.”
In Europe, the coexistence of wolves with lynx also resulted in lower deer densities than when wolves existed alone.
In recent years, OSU researchers have helped lead efforts to understand how major predators help to reduce herbivore population levels, improve ecosystem function and even change how herbivores behave when they feel threatened by predation – an important aspect they call the “ecology of fear.”
“In systems where large predators remain, they appear to have a major role in sustaining the diversity and productivity of native plant communities, thus maintaining healthy ecosystems,” said Beschta. “When the role of major predators is more fully appreciated, it may allow managers to reconsider some of their assumptions about the management of wildlife.”
In Idaho and Montana, hundreds of wolves are now being killed in an attempt to reduce ranching conflicts and increase game herd levels.
The new analysis makes clear that the potential beneficial ecosystem effects of large predators is far more pervasive, over much larger areas, than has often been appreciated.
It points out how large predators can help maintain native plant communities by keeping large herbivore densities in check, allow small trees to survive and grow, reduce stream bank erosion, and contribute to the health of forests, streams, fisheries and other wildlife.
It also concludes that human hunting, due to its limited duration and impact, is not effective in preventing hyper-abundant densities of large herbivores. This is partly “because hunting by humans is often not functionally equivalent to predation by large, wide-ranging carnivores such as wolves,” the researchers wrote in their report.
“More studies are necessary to understand how many wolves are needed in managed ecosystems,” Ripple said. “It is likely that wolves need to be maintained at sufficient densities before we see their resulting effects on ecosystems.”
The research was published online today in the European Journal of Wildlife Research, a professional journal.
“The preservation or recovery of large predators may represent an important conservation need for helping to maintain the resiliency of northern forest ecosystems,” the researchers concluded, “especially in the face of a rapidly changing climate.”
From Oregon State University Relations and Marketing: http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2012/apr/loss-predators-northern-hemisphere-affecting-ecosystem-health
Photo by M L on Unsplash
