Spanning more than 179,000 km² (69,000 square miles) in Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia, the Pantanal boasts one of the highest concentration of flora and fauna in South America while serving as one of the planet’s most successful models for sustainable use of a common resource pool. Most of its land is used for traditional cattle ranching and fishing by local communities and sport ... 

The world’s birds, described as the planet’s “canaries in the coalmine”, are disappearing in large numbers as the colossal impact of humanity on the Earth grows, a global review has found.

There are about 11,000 species of bird spanning the globe. The review found that 48% of bird species are known or suspected to be undergoing population declines, compared with 39% with flat trends, 6% showing ... 

The number of flying insects in Great Britain has plunged by almost 60% since 2004, according to a survey that counted splats on car registration plates.

The results from many thousands of journeys by members of the public in the summer of 2021 were compared with results from 2004. The fall was highest in England, at 65%, with Wales recording 55% fewer insects and Scotland 28%.

The new results are ... 

Oyster fisheries in Australia and North America survived for up to 10,000 years prior to colonisation, sustaining First Nations communities even under intense harvest.

Oyster fisheries have declined globally in modern times: an estimated 85% of 19th-century oyster reef area has been lost in the past 200 years.

In Australia, the research drew upon 16 known oyster middens in south-east Queensland – ... 

21% of reptile species are threatened with extinction, including more than half of turtles and crocodiles.

More than 40% of amphibians, 25% of mammals and 13% of birds could face extinction.

In a new global assessment, published in the journal Nature, researchers assessed 10,196 reptile species and evaluated them using criteria from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) ... 

Half of all river basins across the world are now “severely affected” by water diversion projects, which can exacerbate drought conditions and lead to human conflict. About the same percentage of lakes and reservoirs in Asia, Europe and North America also show eutrophication, an excess of nutrients that can lead to algae blooms and ecosystem collapse.

While many such problems are tied ... 

In this mysterious woodland the cloud drapes over mountain ridges and “the trees are dwarfed and wind-sculpted, gnarled and heavily laden with mosses,” said J Alan Pounds, an ecologist at the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve in Costa Rica.

“The soils are very dark and so golden toads would stand out like animal figurines. It was quite a spectacle.”

 ... 

Scientists from the University of Illinois tracked species of birds in a protected forest reserve in central Panama to determine if and how populations had changed from 1977 to 2020.

A new study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that the majority of sampled species had declined in abundance, many of them severely.

Of the declining species sampled, 35 out of 40 lost ... 

15 years after its was first discovered in a New York cave, white-nose syndrome has decimated the nation’s population of northern long-eared bats, reducing their numbers to almost nothing.

It evolved in the dark millions of years ago with bats in Eurasia, which, unlike bats in the United States, appear to be unaffected by the disease. After the fungus made its way across the Atlantic Ocean, possibly ... 

The gang-gang cockatoo, the animal emblem of the Australian Capital Territory, will be officially listed as a threatened species after a large decline in its numbers due to the climate crisis and the bushfire disaster.

The decline is expected to continue because increased heatwaves and fire frequency as a result of the climate emergency is increasing pressure on the species across its range, with ... 

The Mekong dolphin population has long been IUCN red-listed as Critically Endangered.

The last known river dolphin in the transboundary pool on the Cambodia-Laos border was found dead on February 15, 2022. This death most likely represents a national-level extinction for Laos. The dolphin was 25 years old, male, 260cm in length and weighed 110kg (243 pounds).

The population was publicly declared functionally ... 

The Australian government has officially listed thekoala as endangered after a decline in its numbers due to land clearing and catastrophic bushfires shrinking its habitat.

The environment minister, Sussan Ley, accepted the recommendation of the threatened species scientific committee that the koala populations of Queensland, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory should have their ... 

Container ship accidents at sea should be considered the “oil spills of our time”, warned environmental organisations that found a toxic mix of metals, carcinogenic and other harmful chemicals on plastic washed up on Sri Lanka’s beaches after a cargo ship fire.

When the X-Press Pearl sank off nine nautical miles off Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital, in May 2021, the most “significant harm” ... 

Plastic pollution at sea is reaching worrying levels and will continue to grow even if significant action is taken now to stop such waste from reaching the world’s oceans, according to a review of hundreds of academic studies.

Some regions—such as the Mediterranean, the East China and Yellow Seas—already contain dangerous levels of plastic, while others risk becoming increasingly polluted ... 

Plastic has infiltrated all parts of the ocean and is now found “in the smallest plankton up to the largest whale” wildlife group WWF said.

Tiny fragments of plastic have reached even the most remote and seemingly-pristine regions of the planet: it peppers Arctic sea ice and has been found inside fish in the deepest recesses of the ocean, the Mariana Trench.

WWF sought to bolster the case ... 

Healthy-looking ochre sea stars have minimal genetic difference from those displaying symptoms of sea star wasting syndrome, say Oregon State University researchers who examined whether genetic variation was the reason some animals went unaffected during an epidemic of the deadly disease.

Also called the purple ochre and known scientifically as Pisaster ochraceus, the ochre sea star saw its populations ... 

Just 15.5% of the world’s coastal regions remain ecologically intact, according to new research that calls for urgent conservation measures to protect what remains and restore sites that are degraded.

It found that up to 2013 – the latest year for which the data was available – few intact coastlines remained.

The small areas of coast that remain undamaged by pressures such as fishing, agriculture, ... 

By 2080, around 70% of the world’s oceans could be suffocating from a lack of oxygen as a result of climate change, potentially impacting marine ecosystems worldwide.

The new models find mid-ocean depths that support many fisheries worldwide are already losing oxygen at unnatural rates and passed a critical threshold of oxygen loss in 2021.

Oceans carry dissolved oxygen as a gas, and just like ... 

• Land-clearing for crops in the Murray-Darling basin, the main winter breeding ground for the moths,
• Severe drought in the breeding grounds,
• Increased use of pesticides such as neonicotinoids in Australia (some of which are banned in other countries),
• Increased light pollution, which disrupts the moths’ migration,
• Destruction of habitat and flowering plants on their migration routes, and
• A climate that is becoming warmer and drier.

The moths provide a necessary feast for mountain pygmy-possums awakening from hibernation, and are also a key food source for birds, other mammals, reptiles and frogs, many of which are endangered in alpine regions.

“Even other invertebrates, such as ants and spiders, are seen feasting on the moths. The nutrients left every year by the moths are also important to the alpine soil and plants.”

“Given ... 

Among the species listed is the bogong moth.

Scientists have detected steady declines in numbers of bogong moths since the 1980s. But in 2017 and 2018 that crashed to numbers so low the species was described as “undetectable” in the alpine regions where it used to arrive in spring in numbers as high as 4.4 billion.

The ecologist, Ken Green, has been monitoring bogong moths for 40 years.

He and ... 

A record manatee die-off in Florida this year has become so dire that federal officials are taking a once unthinkable step — feeding the wild marine mammals to help them survive the winter.

More than 1,000 manatees, about 15% of the state’s total population, have died this year. But even with a supplemental feeding program — delivering heads of lettuce and cabbage as the manatees gather in ... 

The warming of the planet is taking a deadly toll on seabirds that are suffering population declines from starvation, inability to reproduce, heat waves and extreme weather.

One estimate by researchers from University of British Columbia stated that seabird populations have fallen 70% since the mid-20th century.

Researchers from the University of Washington and other institutions who studied dozens ... 

The red list of Britain’s most endangered birds has increased to 70 species. Birds are placed on the red list either because their populations have severely declined in Britain, or because they are considered under threat of global extinction.

The red list now accounts for more than a quarter of Britain’s 245 bird species, almost double the 36 species given the status of “highest conservation ... 

216 out of 1,299 species are threatened – up from 195 in 2011 – with the climate crisis pushing more birds on to the list or increasing the threat status of those in danger.

Climate change and warming waters are pushing black-browed albatross break-up rates higher. Typically after choosing a partner, only 1-3% would separate in search of greener romantic pastures.

But in the years with unusually warm water temperatures, that average consistently rose, with up to 8% of couples splitting up. The study looked at a wild population of 15,500 breeding pairs in the Falkland ... 

From a study published in 2019:

Biodiversity of insects is threatened worldwide. Our work reveals dramatic rates of decline that may lead to the extinction of 40% of the world’s insect species over the next few decades.

The main drivers of species declines appear to be in order of importance: i) habitat loss and conversion to intensive agriculture and urbanisation; ii) pollution, mainly that ... 

Las Tablas de Daimiel is a unique wetland in the vast, almost treeless plains of Castilla-La Mancha in central Spain, but the park has had the life sucked out of it to slake intensive agriculture’s insatiable thirst.

3,000 hectares (7,400 acres) of Las Tablas wetland are all that remain of what, according to the World Wildlife Fund, was once a system of 50,000 hectares.

The park has been dry for ... 

One of every six birds – a net loss of 600 million breeding birds in total – have disappeared over less than four decades.

The study by scientists from the RSPB, BirdLife International and the Czech Society for Ornithology analysed data for 378 of 445 bird species native to countries in the EU and UK, finding that the overall abundance of breeding birds declined by between 17% and 19% between ... 

The US and Canada have lost more than one in four birds – a total of three billion – between 1970 and 2019, culminating in what scientists who published a new study are calling a “widespread ecological crisis”.

Researchers observed a 29% decline in bird populations across diverse groups and habitats.

The study did not analyze the reason for the drop. But around the world, birds are thought ... 

If global warming is kept to 1.5˚C, the mix of corals on the Barrier Reef will change but it could still thrive, said the study’s lead author Professor Terry Hughes, of the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies.

“If we go to 3, 4˚C of global average warming which is tragically the trajectory we are currently on, then there won’t be much ... 

Earth now faces a global extinction crisis never witnessed by humankind. Scientists predict that more than 1 million species are on track for extinction in the coming decades. Every taxon is in trouble –

• Amphibians: More than 33% of the known 6,300 species are at risk of extinction.
• Birds: 12% of known 9,865 species are considered

Nearly 21,000 monitored populations of mammals, fish, birds, reptiles and amphibians, encompassing almost 4,400 species around the world, have declined an average of 68% between 1970 and 2016, according to the World Wildlife Fund’s Living Planet Report 2020.

Species in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as global freshwater habitats, were disproportionately impacted, declining, on ... 

Nature is being destroyed at a rate never before seen in human history, that rate is accelerating and almost all of the destruction is caused by humans. 

Australia is ranked third in the world for the most species extinction, and number one when it comes to extinctions of mammals. More than a third of all mammal extinctions since industrialisation have occurred in Australia.

A study ... 

An international team of researchers has created a model that estimates the effects on the world’s oceans over the past century by fish and their excrement.

The model showed that the amount of fecal matter dropped by fish globally is approximately half of what it once was, which suggests only half as much carbon is being sequestered. The remainder is likely entering the atmosphere, contributing ... 

Protecting trees is key to meeting ambitious climate goals, with tropical rainforest loss accounting for about eight percent of annual carbon dioxide emissions, according to monitoring platform Global Forest Watch.

Indonesia, home to the world’s third-largest expanse of tropical forest, walked away from the $1-billion deal with Norway, having received only a tiny fraction of the money.

While ... 

Almost half of Britain’s natural biodiversity has disappeared over the centuries, with farming and urban spread triggered by the industrial and agricultural revolutions being blamed as major factors for this loss.

Across the nation, woods and grassland have been ripped up and fields of single crops planted in their place. Over two-thirds of the UK is now used for agriculture and 8% has been built ... 

In the nearly half-century since the U.S. Endangered Species Act came into force, only 11 other species have ever been delisted because they disappeared.

A million plants and animals are in danger of disappearing, many within decades. The newly extinct species are the casualties of climate change and habitat destruction, dying out sooner than any new protections can save them.

The species pushed over ... 

Koalas

• 30% decline of total population in 3 years; the state of New South Wales was worst with a 41% decline in 3 years.
• Now extinct in 47 electorates and only one electorate, Mayo in the Mt Lofty Ranges of South Australia, has more than 5,000 koalas.
• Every

260 Spanish troops are assisting firefighters battling a raging blaze that has emptied out villages and burned through forestland for days.

“We have talked for a long time about the consequences of abandoning the environment, or climate change. Today, we are living them,” Juan Sánchez, director of the operations center at Andalusia’s forest–fire agency, told reporters.

Efforts to halt decline of population & diversity of animals & plants have largely failed.

28% of the 138,000 species assessed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) are now at risk of extinction, including 37% of sharks & rays.

In 2019 the UN’s biodiversity experts warned that a million species are on the brink of extinction—raising the spectre that ... 

The pollution, emissions and clean-up costs of plastic produced in 2019 alone exceeded the annual GDP of India.

It estimated that unless there is concerted international action, this cost will double by 2040.

Since the 1950s, roughly 8.3 billion tonnes of plastic have been produced with around 60% of that tossed into landfills or the natural environment.

The debris is estimated to cause the deaths ...