- There are many important conservation and environmental stories Mongabay isn’t able to cover.
- Here’s a digest of some of the significant developments from the week.
- If you think we’ve missed something, feel free to add it in the comments.
- Mongabay does not vet the news sources below, nor does the inclusion of a story on this list imply an endorsement of its content.
Tropical forests
The American Museum of Natural History has withdrawn its hosting of an event by a lobby group honoring Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who has moved to marginalize native peoples and develop the Amazon, as its “person of the year” (BBC).
The news that Bolsonaro would be honored at the event in New York came just days after he announced his intention to open up a vast tract of the Amazon to mining companies (Reuters).
Ecuador’s indigenous communities are leveraging technology to protect their homeland in the Amazon (Pacific Standard).
An acoustics project has made it possible to livestream a soundtrack of the rainforest in Borneo from a website (Imperial College London).
Deforestation could lead to the “extinction” of three lakes in Tanzania (IPP Media).
A military leader with ties to the former president of the Democratic Republic of Congo may have sold illegally acquired timber licenses (Africa Times).
Harmonizing differing views of land ownership is critical to a fair titling system in Peru, experts say (CIFOR Forests News).
Tanzania will ban the use, production and import of plastic bags beginning in June 2019 (Xinhua).
Other news
A Florida man was killed by a cassowary, considered perhaps the “world’s most dangerous bird,” that he kept on his farm (The Washington Post, Forbes).
Climate change may worsen allergy symptoms by encouraging trees to release pollen for longer periods (CNN).
Bryde’s whales in the Gulf of Mexico are now protected under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (NOLA).
Development and climate change are threatening a new list of the U.S.’s 10 “most endangered rivers” (Weather.com, USA Today).
The trend of slowing carbon emissions in the U.S. slowed down in 2017 (The Hill).
Coyotes in California like to eat the fruit — and pets — that human gardens provide (The Guardian).
House cats can exact a devastating toll on wildlife if they’re allowed to run outside (City Lab) …
… While outdoor cats are much more likely to have parasites (The New York Times).
Discarded drugs in rivers are affecting the behavior of animals such as salmon (The Atlantic).
A golden eagle in Yellowstone National Park has died from lead poisoning, likely after eating bullet fragments from a carcass shot by a hunter (Associated Press).
Microplastics aren’t just a problem in the sea; they’re in the air, too, a study has found (The New York Times, Pacific Standard).
If you must use grocery-provided bags, what’s better for the environment: paper or plastic? It depends (The New York Times).
Independent satellite monitoring backs up NASA’s climate change-tracking data, showing the planet’s swift warming pace (The Washington Post).
Warmer waters could give pathogens in the ocean a boost, to the detriment of the other organisms that live there (Hakai Magazine).
Scientists are struggling to understand what climate change will mean for the diseases that affect food crops (The Economist).
The Nature Conservancy plans to sell $1.6 billion in “blue bonds” to protect the world’s oceans (GreenBiz).
New research demonstrates that great white sharks fear orcas (The Atlantic).
Banner image of a southern cassowary in Australia by Michael Schmid via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).
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