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Mongabay.com news articles on united states in blog format. Updated regularly.

Coal's true cost in the US: up to half a trillion

(02/20/2011) According to the global market coal is cheap, yet a new study in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences finds that the hidden costs of coal are expensive, very expensive. Estimating the hidden costs of coal, such as health and environmental impacts, the study found that burning coal costs the US up to $523 billion a year. Dubbed 'externalities' by economists, the paper argues that these costs are paid by the American public to the tune of $1,698 per person every year.


California proposes ban on selling shark fin

(02/16/2011) Last year Hawaii banned the sale of shark fins; California may be next. Bill 376, introduced by two Democrats, would outlaw the sale of shark fins, including the popular Asian delicacy shark fin soup, in the US's most populous state.


Arctic fish catch vastly underreported (by hundreds of thousands of metric tons) for 5 decades

(02/07/2011) From 1950 to 2006 the United Nation Food and Agriculture Agency (FAO) estimated that 12,700 metric tons of fish were caught in the Arctic, giving the impression that the Arctic was a still-pristine ecosystem, remaining underexploited by the world's fisheries. However, a recent study by the University of British Colombia Fisheries Center and Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences throws cold water on this widespread belief. According to the study, published in Polar Biology, the total Arctic catch from 1950 to 2006 is likely to have been nearly a million metric tons, almost 75 times the FAO's official record.


The ocean crisis: hope in troubled waters, an interview with Carl Safina

(02/07/2011) Being compared—by more than one reviewer—to Henry Thoreau and Rachel Carson would make any nature writer's day. But add in effusive reviews that compare one to a jazz musician, Ernest Hemingway, and Charles Darwin, and you have a sense of the praise heaped on Carl Safina for his newest work, The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World. Like Safina's other books, The View from Lazy Point focuses on the beauty, poetry, and crisis of the world's oceans and its hundreds-of-thousands of unique inhabitants. Taking the reader on a journey around the world—the Arctic, Antarctic, and the tropics—Safina always returns home to take in the view, and write about the wildlife of his home, i.e. Lazy Point, on Long Island. While Safina's newest book addresses the many ways in which the ocean is being degraded, depleted, and ultimately imperiled as a living ecosystem (such as overfishing and climate change) it also tweezes out stories of hope by focusing on how single animals survive, and in turn how nature survives in an increasingly human world. However, what makes Safina's work different than most nature writing is his ability to move seamlessly from contemporary practical problems to the age-old philosophical underpinnings that got us here. By doing so, he points a way forward.


Forest carbon conservation project launched in Arkansas

(02/03/2011) The United States may not have capped its national greenhouse gas emissions, but the US state of California did cap its state emissions – and voters there seconded the state’s decision when they rejected Proposition 23, which would have all but killed cap-and-trade. The end of Prop 23 could mean the beginning of a great experiment to see if people in the United States can make money by doing good. This carbon fund is betting on a positive outcome.


From Cambodia to California: the world's top 10 most threatened forests

(02/02/2011) Growing populations, expanding agriculture, commodities such as palm oil and paper, logging, urban sprawl, mining, and other human impacts have pushed many of the world's great forests to the brink. Yet scientists, environmentalists, and even some policymakers increasingly warn that forests are worth more standing than felled. They argue that by safeguarding vulnerable biodiversity, sequestering carbon, controlling erosion, and providing fresh water, forests provide services to humanity, not to mention the unquantifiable importance of having wild places in an increasingly human-modified world. Still, the decline of the world's forests continues: the FAO estimating that around 10 million hectares of tropical forest are lost every year. Of course, some of these forests are more imperiled than others, and a new analysis by Conservation International (CI) has catalogued the world's 10 most threatened forests.


Obama's State of the Union salmon joke highlights complexity of coastal ecosystem services

(01/29/2011) U.S. President Barack Obama told his now-famous salmon joke on Tuesday to illustrate the silliness of unnecessarily complex regulation, but the joke says more about the complexity of coastal ecosystems – and the challenge of keeping them intact in the face of growing development – than it does about regulatory dysfunction.  It's a challenge that must – and can – be met by getting the private sector involved in protecting the nature along our coasts.


Is Obama's clean energy revolution possible?

(01/26/2011) Last night US President Barack Obama called for a massive green energy make-over of the world's largest economy. Describing the challenge as 'this generation's Sputnik moment' the US president set a goal of producing 80 percent of America's energy by clean sources by 2035. While this may sound improbable, two recent analyses back the president up, arguing that a global clean energy revolution is entirely possible within a few decades using contemporary technology and without breaking the bank. "Based on our findings, there are no technological or economic barriers to converting the entire world to clean, renewable energy sources," Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford said in a press release. "It is a question of whether we have the societal and political will."


Prairie grass-based biofuels could meet half current fuel demand without affecting forests, food

(01/26/2011) Biofuels could meet up to half the world's current fuel consumption without affecting food production or forests, argues a study published last month in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.


American cougars on the decline: 'We’re running against the clock,' says big cat expert

(01/17/2011) It holds the Guinness World Record for having the most names of any animal on the planet, with 40 in English alone. It's also the widest-ranging native land animal in the Americas, yet is declining throughout much of its range. Mongabay talks with big cat expert Dr. Howard Quigley about the status and research implications of the elusive, enigmatic, and unique cougar.


"End of Days" bird kill just a fraction of real death toll

(01/07/2011) The sudden en-masse deaths of thousands of birds in the Southern U.S. on the night of New Year's Eve have created a frenzy of media attention, but in reality hardly compare to the massive number that die each year because of human activity.


U.S. passes legislation to protect sharks

(01/05/2011) The U.S. Senate has passed the Shark Conservation Act, legislation that bans shark finning in U.S. waters.


U.S. bumble bees experiencing significant declines

(01/04/2011) Many US bumble bee populations have declined significantly over the past few decades, with certain species dropping off by as much as 96%. While the decline is linked to low genetic diversity and disease, an underlying cause remains uncertain.


Rise in the number of whales hit by ships prompts Coast Guard to consider changes

(12/27/2010) A bumper crop of krill along the West Coast this past summer lured whales into the paths of cargo ships. With five collision deaths confirmed, and many more suspected, the US Coast Guard is investigating ways to mitigate future losses of these rare mammals.


New legislation places US at forefront of shark conservation

(12/27/2010) Last week the US Senate passed the Shark Conservation Act, which bolsters the prohibition of shark-finning in US waters and puts the US at the forefront of shark conservation.


United States to back U.N. indigenous rights declaration

(12/23/2010) The United States will endorse the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP), making it the last industrialized power to support the agreement, which recognizes the rights of indigenous peoples on issues including free prior and informed consent (FPIC), right to sovereignty, territory and respect for traditional knowledge. The move was announced last week by President Barack Obama.


Census: 308.7 million people live in the United States

(12/22/2010) 308,745,538 people were living in the United States on April 1, 2010, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.


Top 10 Environmental Stories of 2010

(12/20/2010) Below is a quick review of some of the biggest environmental stories of 2010: Climate change rears it ugly head; Oil spill in the Gulf; Agreement to save global biodiversity; Illegal logging crisis in Madagascar; REDD kicks off in Indonesia; Brazil deforestation falls to its lowest level; Hungary's red sludge; Nestle caves to social media activists; New mammals galore' and Global climate framework back on the table?


Groups call on KFC to end greenwashing

(12/19/2010) A coalition of environmental groups is calling on Kentucky Fried Chicken to end its use of products carrying the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) certification label.


New hope for polar bears

(12/17/2010) Once thought of as a doomed species, new research published in the journal Nature and conducted by scientists from several institutions, including the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Geological Survey, finds that polar bears could be saved from extinction - if certain measures are taken.


US most vulnerable to climate change among world's wealthy nations

(12/06/2010) While the US has done little to mitigate climate change, a new report by humanitarian research organization DARA and the Climate Vulnerable Forum states that of all industrialized nations the US will face the most harm from a warming world. Together with Spain, the US's vulnerability to climate change has been listed as High by the newly released Climate Vulnerability Monitor.


Breaking all of life's rules: scientists discover bacteria that can survive on arsenic

(12/02/2010) While for days rumors have circulated around the Internet that NASA had discovered alien life, the truth may be even less expected. Instead of aliens, NASA-funded researchers have discovered a microorganism on Earth that breaks all the rules of life: in Mono Lake in California scientists found a bacterium that can survive wholly on arsenic. The microorganism is capable of replacing phosphate, one of the essential blocks of all known life, with the toxic chemical arsenic according to new researched published in Science. Uncovered by lead author and NASA-funded scientist, Felicia Wolf-Simon, along with astrobiolgist colleagues at Arizona State University, the discovery is thought to have widespread implications on how life may survive on other planets.


Climate change linked to 21,000 deaths in nine months

(11/30/2010) Extreme weather events linked to climate change has caused the deaths of 21,000 people worldwide in the first nine months of 2010, according to Oxfam. This is already twice the casualties of 2009. In a new report More than ever: climate talks that work for those that need them most, the organization outlines the casualties of such weather-related disasters, for example devastating floods in Pakistan which killed 2,000 people and affected more than 20 million.


Ad warning of mass extinction appears in Times Square

(11/24/2010) An advertisement warning holiday pedestrians about mass extinction—and asking for their help—first appeared in Times Square this week. The ad which flashes on CBS's Super LED Screen between 7th and 8th avenues was created by US conservation organization, the Center for Biological Diversity.


Unprecedented tundra fire likely linked to climate change

(11/23/2010) A thousand square kilometers of the Alaskan tundra burned in September 2007, a single fire that doubled the area burned in the region since 1950. However, a new study in the Journal of Geophysical Research finds that the fire was even more unprecedented than imagined: sediment cores found that it was the most destructive fire in the area for at least 5,000 years and maybe longer. "If such fires occur every 200 years or every 500 years, it's a natural event," University of Illinois plant biology professor Feng Sheng Hu explains in a press release. "But another possibility is that these are truly unprecedented events caused by, say, greenhouse warming."


Cancún Climate Summit: Time for a New Geopolitical Architecture

(11/22/2010) As we approach crucial climate change negotiations in Cancún, Mexico the key question on many people’s minds is this: what nation or nations will have the courage to stand up to the United States, which still represents the key obstacle to a binding agreement on global warming? If it looked unlikely that the U.S. would reduce carbon emissions before, the recent midterm elections have made such a possibility seem even more remote: many incoming Republican legislators simply deny that global warming exists.


Bad books: US paper products are breaking the law and devastating rainforests

(11/18/2010) Everyone knows books are made of paper, but few think of where that paper comes from. However, two new reports may change that. Both the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) and the World Resources Institute (WRI) have found that some paper used in books, including popular children's books, is linked to forest devastation in Indonesian, even targeting endangered trees that have been harvested illegally.


Stymied by lack of global climate deal, states develop own low carbon accord

(11/17/2010) California and other states launched an international initiative that will work toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions and transitioning toward a low carbon economy in the absence of a global climate deal.


What do wolves and sharks have in common?

(11/15/2010) Sharks dwell in the ocean, wolves on land; sharks are a type of fish, wolves are a mammal; sharks go back some 400 million years, wolves only some 2 million years. So, these animals should have little in common, right? However, a new study in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment points to surprising similarities among these disparate animals. As top predators, both wolves and sharks impact their prey and other species in similar ways.


Critics say Obama slow on endangered species

(11/15/2010) The Obama Administration is lagging behind past administrations in its listing of dwindling species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). To date the US Fish and Wildlife Service has added 51 species to the ESA since Obama's took office, according to the conservation group, Center for Biological Diversity. By contrast, the Clinton Administration averaged 65 species a year with a total of 522 species protected. Obama is more proactive than George W. Bush, however, who was seen by many critics as actively undercutting the ESA. Only one of the species protected so far by the Obama Administration is found in the continental US.


Bacteria deep in the Gulf of Mexico consumed oil faster than expected, study finds

(11/15/2010) BP’s disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico this year killed countless marine animals, but it was a boon for oil-eating bacteria. The organisms, usually quiescent deep in the ocean, burst into life when the Deep Water Horizon wellhead ruptured and released a torrent of their favorite food. A study published in the 8 October issue of Science demonstrated how quickly bacteria consumed the light crude oil.


Beyond gloom: solutions to the global coral reef decline

(11/10/2010) The world's coral reefs are in trouble. Due to a variety of factors—including ocean acidification, warming temperatures from climate change, overfishing, and pollution—coral cover has decline by approximately 125,000 square kilometers in the past 50 or so years. This has caused some marine biologists, like Charlie Veron, Former Chief Scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science, to predict that coral reefs will be largely extinguished within a century. This year alone, large-scale coral bleaching events, whereby coral lose their symbiotic protozoa and become prone to disease and mortality, were seen off the coasts of Indonesia, the Philippines, and some Caribbean islands. However a new paper in Trends in Ecology and Evolution attempts to dispel the gloom over coral reefs by pointing to strategies, and even some successes, to save them.


Open landfills feed population growth of predatory Alaskan gulls

(11/08/2010) Gulls in northern Alaska are making a killing on the garbage they scavenge from landfills, new research shows. Glaucous gulls that consume a lot of trash raise more chicks than gulls that eat only natural food, according to a study in the August 2010 issue of The Condor. The garbage is a boon for the gulls, but it’s a bust for other birds nesting on Alaska's coastal plain. These gulls are predators, and their burgeoning numbers threaten waterbird populations already in decline.


Flight of the Monarchs Reveals Environmental Connections across a Continent

(11/08/2010) As autumn settles across North America, one hallmark of the season is the gentle southward flight of the Monarch Butterflies as they migrate towards the forests that shelter their species during the winter months. Unfortunately, as with other forests across the planet, the Monarch's "over- wintering grounds" in Mexico are suffering from increased human pressures. An innovative conservation group called the ECOLIFE Foundation has stepped up to help safeguard the Monarch's winter forests, and in the process discovered that addressing the Monarch's plight came only after uncovering connections that bind us all. The following article is an interview with Bill Toone, the Executive Director of ECOLIFE.


US elects barrage of climate change deniers, threatening support for green energy

(11/03/2010) The US midterm election, which won Republicans the House but safeguarded the Senate for Democrats, has brought in a number of self-proclaimed climate change deniers, ending any likelihood that an energy bill will be passed over the next two years and essentially stumbling the White House's strategy on climate change. Newly elected Republican Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Marc Rubio of Florida, both members of the nascent Tea Party, have stated they do not believe in climate change despite that scientists overwhelming agree the Earth is warming due to human impacts.


Undercover for animals: on the frontline of wildlife crime in the US

(11/03/2010) Special Agent O’Connor is a veteran wildlife law enforcement officer, with over 20 years of service under belt. She began her career in wildlife law enforcement as a Conservation Police Officer for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, where she served for eight years. She then moved to federal wildlife law enforcement with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, where she was first posted to Ann Arbor, Michigan, and then to St. Paul, Minnesota. During that time, she investigated several major cases that led to felony convictions for violations of wildlife laws. She now serves as a training officer at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC), the interagency law enforcement training organization that serves 88 Federal agencies, in Georgia.


Mixed messages on geoengineering: international community approves moratorium, US pushes research

(10/31/2010) Efforts to explore geoengineering, whereby governments would employ large-scale projects to alter the world's climate in a bid to combat climate change, received mixed messages this week. In Nagoya, Japan—where all but three of the world's nations (the US, Andorra, and the Holy See) met at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to hammer out an agreement on stemming biodiversity loss—member nations agreed on Friday to a moratorium on geoengineering schemes. On the same day a US congressional report on geoengineering, which it termed climate engineering, recommended "research now to better understand which technologies or methods, if any, represent viable stopgap strategies for managing our changing climate."


Harrison Ford chides US for spurning international biodiversity treaty

(10/28/2010) In a speech in Nagoya, Japan at the UN's Convention for Biological Diversity (CBD) actor and conservationist, Harrison Ford, called on delegates to put aside differences and adopt a strong treaty to protect biodiversity. As a US citizen, he also urged his country to become a full signatory of the CBD. "The time has come for the United States to step up to the plate. The problem is so big and the time is so short, we have no choice. We have to act and we have to act now," said Ford.


Undergrads in the Amazon: American students witness beauty and crisis in Yasuni National Park, Ecuador

(10/28/2010) Although most Americans have likely seen photos and videos of the world's largest rainforest, the Amazon, they will probably never see it face-to-face. For many, the Amazon seems incredibly remote: it is a dim, mysterious place, a jungle surfeit in adventure and beauty—but not a place to take a family vacation or spend a honeymoon. This means that the destruction of the Amazon, like the rainforest itself, also appears distant when seen from Oregon or North Carolina or Pennsylvania. Oil spills in Ecuador, cattle ranching in Brazil, hydroelectric dams in Peru: these issues are low, if not non-existent, for most Americans. But a visit to the Amazon changes all that. This was recently confirmed to me when I traveled with American college students during a trip to far-flung Yasuni National Park in Ecuador. As a part of a study abroad program with the University of San Francisco in Quito and the Galapagos Academic Institute for the Arts and Sciences (GAIAS), these students spend a semester studying ecology and environmental issues in Ecuador, including a first-time visit to the Amazon rainforest at Tiputini Biodiversity Station in Yasuni—and our trips just happened to overlap.


California puts fate of tropical rainforests up for vote

(10/27/2010) When you vote on Nov. 2, remember that Peru is planning to save all of its rain forest. To reach the zero deforestation goal, a new environmental policy put in place last year calls for innovative payments to indigenous people and peasants, who control around a quarter of the forest, and a mosaic of protected areas and sustainable timber production for much of the rest. Environmental costs are being rolled into environmental impact assessments, and the country is formulating new ways to mitigate and compensate for the effects of big development projects, such as roads and dams. Meanwhile, California is poised to make a headlong leap in the other direction. Proposition 23 on the Nov. 2 ballot would kill the state's 2006 climate law by permitting it to kick in only if California becomes a full-employment economic utopia of a sort not yet seen on this continent. While much of the Proposition 23 debate revolves around the important effects here, this policy U-turn could thwart budding environmental efforts around the world, such as those in Peru.


BP funneling money to climate change denying candidates in US

(10/25/2010) BP, who was responsible for the US's worst environmental disaster to date, has been funneling thousands of dollars to politicians in the US known for denying the science of climate change according to the Guardian. A report by Climate Action Network Europe has found that a number of big European companies have been funding candidates such as James Inhofe from Oklahoma, who has called climate change a 'hoax' and compared environmentalists to the Third Reich.


Already Critically Endangered, bluefin tuna hit hard by BP oil disaster

(10/19/2010) Using satellite data from the European Space Agency, researchers estimate that over 20% of juvenile Atlantic bluefin tuna in the Gulf of Mexico were killed by the BP oil spill. Although that percentage may not seem catastrophic, the losses are on top of an 82% decline in the overall population over the past three decades due to overfishing. The population plunge has pushed the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to categorize the fish as Critically Endangered, its highest rating before extinction.


Majority of Americans confused on climate change basics

(10/17/2010) Most Americans don't understand the basics of climate change, according to a new poll by researchers with Yale. The poll found that over half of Americans deserve an 'F' on basic understanding of climate science and climate change, while only 1% would receive an 'A'.


The ultimate bike trip: the Amazon rainforest

(10/17/2010) Like all commercial roads through rainforests, the 5,300 kilometer long Rodovia Transamazonica (in English, the Trans-Amazonia), brought two things: people and environmental destruction. Opening once-remote areas of the Amazon to both legal and illegal development, farmers, loggers, and miners cut swathes into the forest now easily visible from satellite. But the road has also brought little prosperity: many who live there are far from infrastructure and eek out an impoverished existence in a harsh lonely wilderness. This is not a place even the most adventurous travelers go, yet Doug Gunzelmann not only traveled the entirety of the Transamazonica in 2009, he cycled it. A self-described adventurer, Gunzelmann chose to bike the Transamazonica as a way to test his endurance on a road which only a few before have completed. But Gunzelmann wasn't just out for adrenaline-rushes, he was also deeply interested in the environmental issues related to the Transamazonica. What he found was a story without villains, but only humans—and the Amazon itself—trying to survive in a complex, confusing world.


Humanity consuming the Earth: by 2030 we'll need two planets

(10/13/2010) Too many people consuming too much is depleting the world's natural resources faster than they are replenished, imperiling not only the world's species but risking the well-being of human societies, according to a new massive study by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), entitled the Living Planet Report. The report finds that humanity is currently consuming the equivalent of 1.5 planet Earths every year for its activities. This overconsumption has caused biodiversity—in this case, representative populations of vertebrate animals—to fall by 30 percent worldwide since 1970. The situation is more dire in tropical regions where terrestrial species' populations have fallen by 60 percent and freshwater species by 70 percent.


New Google wind project moves clean energy forward in US

(10/12/2010) While the US has fallen far behind China and Europe in clean energy power, an announcement by Google today brings hope to green energy backers. Google is putting its considerable name and a lot of cash behind a $5 billion energy transmission line that would link up proposed wind turbines off the US's East Coast to consumers.


Citizens of 188 countries challenge leaders on climate change

(10/11/2010) As world leaders continue to fumble a coherent, rapid, and comprehensive response to climate change, citizens from around the world yesterday sent a message to inert politicians by participating in over 7,300 events against climate change, according to 350.org, the head organizer of the day dubbed the 'Global Work Party'. "The fossil fuel industry may have thought that the collapse of the Copenhagen talks and its victory in the U.S. Congress were the final word—that people would give up in discouragement," said, Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, so-called because 350 parts per millions (ppm) is the 'safe' amount of carbon in the atmosphere according to many scientists. Currently the concentration is around 390 ppm.


Do wind farms drive local warming?

(10/11/2010) Using decades-old data researchers have proven a long-suspected effect of wind turbines: under certain conditions large-scale wind farms can change local weather. Temperatures recorded from a wind farm in San Gorgonio, California in 1989 shows that turbines cooled local temperatures during the day, but warmed them at night. However, researchers in the paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science say that the impact of wind farms on local temperatures will not be the same everywhere.


Unsure of domestic wood origin, some Brazilian furniture makers begin importing U.S. timber

(10/04/2010) Export-oriented Brazilian furniture manufacturers are importing certified timber from the United States rather than using wood of questionable origin produced domestically, reports the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) in its bimonthly update.


Free availability of satellite imagery has boosted deforestation monitoring applications, but risk of data gap looms

(09/29/2010) In recent years there has been an explosion in the number of satellite-based monitoring applications and technologies, which is perhaps best exemplified in the eyes of the public by Google Earth, which allows anyone with a decent internet connection to view overhead images of nearly any place on Earth. But these new applications are also helping scientists more effectively monitor environmental change, including the fluctuations in polar sea ice, shifts in oceanic plankton, and deforestation. An important factor in the expanded use of satellite imagery has been the U.S. government's free Landsat Data Distribution Policy, which allows free or inexpensive access to data captured by Landsat satellites, which have been collected data on a regular basis since 1972. But the Landsat program is not presently operating at its full capacity, increasing the risk of a 'data gap' before a new system is in place in 2012.



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