"The earth we abuse and the living things we kill will, in the end, take their revenge; for in exploiting their presence we are diminishing our future." -Marya Mannes
"Because we don't think about future generations, they will never forget us." ~Henrik Tikkanen
About Me
My name is Gail, short for Abigail. I’m a humpback whale, in case you couldn’t tell! I was born off the coast of Australia.
I love to travel! I swim all over, and have been to almost all of the major oceans and seas! I especially love the North Pacific and Antarctic, but Australian waters will always be home.
I’m very interested in how the rest of my fellow Earth dwellers are doing. Us humpback whales know what it’s like to have our numbers dwindle down to almost nothing, and then bounce back. If we can do it, any species can!
As I travel the seas, I’ll collect conservation news concerning the rest of Earth’s wildlife.
Sarah Palin and Gov. Sean Parnell’s lawsuit to delist Beluga Whales from endangered species list was defeated. The Center for Biological Diversity and several other environmental groups got the lawsuit thrown out of Federal Court.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska— A federal judge…rejected the state of Alaska’s 2010 lawsuit that tried to strip Endangered Species Act protections for Cook Inlet beluga whales. The whales were listed as an endangered species in 2008. In today’s decision, the judge said that the best available science supports the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s determination that Cook Inlet beluga whales are in danger of extinction. While hunting was initially considered the cause of the significant decline of belugas in the Inlet, the population has continued to decline after hunting ceased in 1999.
Read the rest: Center for Biological Diversity Beluga Whales Win
(via good-conservation-news)
“The news from Indonesia today that Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) has moved a tiger from one part of South Sumatra province to another in order to protect it is supposed to prove that company has green stripes. But, as with anything emanating from the APP publicity machine, scratch beneath the surface and you’ll find an altogether different tale.
…But APP’s attempted good news story disguises the real reason why many of these clashes between people and wildlife are taking place. Destroying the forests which provide hunting and breeding grounds for tigers (as APP is doing) forces them closer to areas populated by people, and then its only a matter of time before someone (or something) gets hurt. In just one logging area in South Sumatra, APP has been responsible for the loss of 27,000 hectares of rainforest identified as tiger habitat since 2007.
Large animals need equally large areas to roam in search of food, especially predators. Fragmenting their habitat with roads and through clearing forests leaves them with smaller and smaller places to go. But it’s not just about tigers, either. These same regions of Indonesia’s rainforests support thousands of species, including many endangered ones, and they can’t all be relocated individually.”
Coca-Cola cans go white for the polar bears
Coca-Cola is ditching its iconic red cans next month as part of a fundraising campaign to protect the polar bear’s Arctic habitat. The company is committed to raising up to $3 million between Nov. 1, 2011 and March 15, 2012. Coca-Cola kicked off the Arctic Home campaign by donating $2 million and will match the first $1 million in public donations.
wwf:
The first little blue penguins affected by the Rena oil spill (Oct 5, New Zealand) were released back into the wild at Mount Maunganui on Tuesday, after several weeks of recovery and care by WWF staff and other members…
(via good-conservation-news)
#it was getting nasty down there #glad these little guys are ok!
KINGS KONG World Wildlife Foundation activists dressed as orangutans hung from ropes near the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw Tuesday. They want to convince Poles to stop buying furniture made out of tropical wood, which depletes natural habitats. (Photo: Kacper Pempel / Reuters via the Wall Street Journal)
(via inothernews)
Conservationists have called on the Indonesian authorities to take urgent action to save the orangutan after a report warned that the endangered great apes were being hunted at a rate that could bring them to the brink of extinction.
Erik Meijaard, who led a team carrying out the first attempt to assess the scale of the problem in Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo, said the results showed that between 750 and 1,800 orangutans were killed as a result of hunting and deforestation in the 12 months to April 2008.
The numbers, which were higher than expected, indicated that most orangutan populations in Kalimantan could be in serious danger “within the foreseeable future”, said Meijaard, of the Jakarta-based People and Nature Consulting International. “At that rate… you’re talking about 10-15 years until pretty much all orangutans [in Kalimantan] are gone.”[read more]
+ Richard Yahner
(Source: just-breezy)
A pair of dolphins may have died after being fed drugs by ravers after a second animal died.
Police looking into the deaths in Connyland, Lipperswil, Switzerland, initially thought the deafening music from the rave may have killed dolphins Shadow and Chelmers.
But zoo vets are awaiting toxicology test results to see if they were poisoned by narcotics thrown into their enclosure during the rave.
Shadow (pictured) died soon after the rave while a second dolphin called Chelmers died two days later
(via dream-chasing)
The Arctic has experienced warm periods before, but the present, rapid shrinking of sea ice is unprecedented. Scientists predict a mostly ice-free Arctic summer by 2040 if present trends continue.
wwf:
On 25 October 2011, WWF and the International Rhino Foundation confirmed that the Javan rhinoceros in Vietnam is extinct.
The species was initially believed to be extinct in Vietnam until 1988, when a very small population was found still clinging to existance in Cat Tien National Park. Efforts were made to save this population but poor protection of its habitat ultimately led to its demise. The last Javan rhino in Vietnam was shot and killed in April 2010 and its horn removed.
(Source: , via katlou23)
(via katlou23)
Canada, which is home to two-thirds of the world’s polar bear population, is taking steps to better protect the endangered bear.
(via katlou23)
nrdc:
Help save Alaska’s beluga whales from the Pebble Mine
The proposed Pebble Mine threatens two of Alaska’s beluga whale populations, including the last 340 belugas of Cook Inlet. You can help save them. Send a message to mining giant Anglo American Corporation urging them to leave Bristol Bay and its beluga whales alone.
(via katlou23)
