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		<title>Conservation news</title>
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		<link>https://news.mongabay.com/list/noise-pollution/</link>
		<description>Environmental science and conservation news</description>
		<lastBuildDate>Tue, 04 Aug 2026 21:41:58 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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	<url>https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2020/05/16160320/cropped-mongabay_icon-32x32.png</url>
	<title>News on Noise Pollution</title>
	<link>https://news.mongabay.com/list/noise-pollution/</link>
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				<item>
					<title>Amazon waterway noise threatens unique social life of giant river turtles</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/03/amazon-waterway-noise-threatens-unique-social-life-of-giant-river-turtles/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/03/amazon-waterway-noise-threatens-unique-social-life-of-giant-river-turtles/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>17 Mar 2026 15:27:32 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Fernanda Wenzel]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Alexandre de Santi]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/03/16173959/Camila_Ferrara_baby_turtle_in_Purus_River-AUTHORIZED-FOR-ONLY-THIS-STORY-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=315800</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Amazon, Brazil, Latin America, and South America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animal Behavior, Animals, Biodiversity, Conservation, Ecosystems, Endangered Species, Environment, Freshwater, Noise Pollution, Pollution, Rivers, Transportation, Turtles, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Hatchlings talk inside their shells to time their birth, but the roar of massive barges may soon drown out their sound.]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[It’s just a sweet, squeaky sound, like that of a rubber duck. For scientists, however, it could have various meanings, ranging from “Time to spawn!&#8221; to “Come on, little ones!” to “Time to migrate!&#8221; Researchers studying the Amazon river turtle (Podocnemis expansa), South America&#8217;s largest turtle, found that hatchlings begin communicating even before birth, probably to agree on the best time to break out of the eggs and burrow up from the sand to the beach. “The Amazon turtle is one of the most social species of turtles in the world,” Camila Rudge Ferrara, the researcher who first proved the turtle’s communication skills, told Mongabay. “They migrate in groups, lay eggs in groups, and hatch in groups,” added the coordinator of the Chelonian Conservation Program in the nonprofit Wildlife Conservation Society in Brazil (WCS Brasil). Soon, however, the chatter of Amazon river turtles in the Tapajós River, a major tributary of the Amazon, may be disrupted by the noise of dredgers, ferries and boats circulating in the river: An ambitious waterway is being planned to ship minerals and grains to the port in the city of Santarém, in Brazil’s Pará state. “The frequency of the sound, dredging and boats may interfere with the turtles&#8217; communication,” Ferrara told Mongabay, but noted that scientists haven’t yet been able to establish this as fact. “The high-frequency underwater noise will disrupt the migration of these animals.” The latest conservation assessment for the species is expected to declare it endangered on the IUCN Red List,&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/03/amazon-waterway-noise-threatens-unique-social-life-of-giant-river-turtles/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
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										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/03/amazon-waterway-noise-threatens-unique-social-life-of-giant-river-turtles/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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					<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-315800</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Nepal’s Supreme Court halts industrial development in Buddha’s birthplace</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/08/nepals-supreme-court-halts-industrial-development-in-buddhas-birthplace/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/08/nepals-supreme-court-halts-industrial-development-in-buddhas-birthplace/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>29 Aug 2025 15:48:24 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Sonam Lama Hyolmo]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Abhaya Raj Joshi]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/08/29151536/%C2%A9-WWF-Nepal-Samir-Jung-Thapa-2-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=305178</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Nepal, and South Asia]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Agriculture, Air Pollution, Biodiversity, Birds, Buddhism, Conservation, Environmental Law, Noise Pollution, Pollution, and UNESCO World Heritage Site]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[KATHMANDU — Whenever Chandra Prakash Pathak visits neighboring farms in his hometown of Lumbini, in southwestern Nepal, he sees a thick blanket of black smog. The problem is more severe in winter, when the country doesn’t receive much rainfall. “The farmland is also covered in dust from the manufacturing plants and industries in the area,” [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[KATHMANDU — Whenever Chandra Prakash Pathak visits neighboring farms in his hometown of Lumbini, in southwestern Nepal, he sees a thick blanket of black smog. The problem is more severe in winter, when the country doesn’t receive much rainfall. “The farmland is also covered in dust from the manufacturing plants and industries in the area,” Pathak told Mongabay by phone. It’s not just people who are affected, he added: birds, rivers and farms are also impacted by the industrial pollution from factories churning out everything from cement and steel to liquor. “The farmers can’t grow rice, wheat, mustard, canola, potatoes or lentils, and have to feed their livestock contaminated water from the Tinau River,” he said. There’s also a spiritual dimension to the problem: Lumbini is famed as the birthplace of the Buddha, and is also home to a population of sarus cranes (Grus antigone) a threatened species closely associated with the Buddhist faith. Relief on all those fronts could soon arrive as Nepal’s Supreme Court has ordered the government to strictly implement a decade-old guideline to halt industrial development around Lumbini to protect its heritage and biodiversity — a move welcomed by local communities and conservationists, but one that has also raised concerns over jobs, investment and the impact on the local economy. Winter smog in Lumbini. ACS Earth Space Chem. 2021, 5, 2, 226-238. CC BY ND 4.0 Responding to a public interest litigation petition, Justices Kumar Regmi and Sunil Kumar Pokharel also imposed restrictions on heavy truck&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/08/nepals-supreme-court-halts-industrial-development-in-buddhas-birthplace/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-305178</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Study finds fast traffic noise is infuriating Galápagos warblers</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/05/study-finds-fast-traffic-noise-is-infuriating-galapagos-warblers/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/05/study-finds-fast-traffic-noise-is-infuriating-galapagos-warblers/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>20 May 2025 20:22:25 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Spoorthy Raman]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Morgan Erickson-Davis]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/05/20100933/36533464334_6c05f3d407_3k-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=299322</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Ecuador, Galapagos, and South America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animal Behavior, Biodiversity, Birds, Conservation, Environment, Islands, Noise Pollution, Pollution, Research, Roadkill, Roads, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[When Leon Hohl and Alper Yelimlieş landed in the Galápagos in 2022 to volunteer in a decades-old nest survey project, they expected to look for Darwin finches and their babies. But that year turned out to be too dry for the finches to breed, and the two bird enthusiasts weren’t going to sit idle. Since [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[When Leon Hohl and Alper Yelimlieş landed in the Galápagos in 2022 to volunteer in a decades-old nest survey project, they expected to look for Darwin finches and their babies. But that year turned out to be too dry for the finches to breed, and the two bird enthusiasts weren’t going to sit idle. Since they were in the Galápagos — nature’s “evolution laboratory” — they turned their attention to another bird: The Galápagos yellow warbler (Setophaga petechia aureola), a subspecies of the North American yellow warbler with elaborate, complex birdsongs. Hohl and Yelimlieş, both from Austria’s University of Vienna, teamed up with their supervisors to understand how the soaring human numbers on the archipelago’s most populous island of Santa Cruz, and increasing vehicular traffic noise in the soundscape, impact the island’s resident birds. “We were interested in how yellow warblers would respond to noise, depending on how much experience they had with noise,” Çağlar Akçay from Anglia Ruskin University, U.K., one of the supervisors, told Mongabay. “Noise is generally a stressor.” In a study published recently in the journal Animal Behaviour, Akçay and his team examined the behavior of male Galápagos yellow warblers on two islands and found that birds living closer to roads with vehicular traffic were more aggressive than their counterparts living further away. Between January and March of 2022, the researchers conducted a set of experiments in which they played pre-recorded male yellow warbler songs on a speaker and observed the birds’ responses to them. The&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/05/study-finds-fast-traffic-noise-is-infuriating-galapagos-warblers/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/05/study-finds-fast-traffic-noise-is-infuriating-galapagos-warblers/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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					<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-299322</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Wildlife-rich mangroves suffer as Indonesia ramps up construction of new capital</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2024/09/wildlife-rich-mangroves-suffer-as-indonesia-ramps-up-construction-of-new-capital/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2024/09/wildlife-rich-mangroves-suffer-as-indonesia-ramps-up-construction-of-new-capital/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>03 Sep 2024 04:04:35 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Hans Nicholas Jong]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Hayat Indriyatno]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2024/09/03031219/Proboscis_monkey_in_Kubu_Raya_-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=286867</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, East Kalimantan, Indonesia, Kalimantan, and Southeast Asia]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, Biodiversity Hotspots, Cities, Conservation, Deforestation, Dolphins, Drivers Of Deforestation, Endangered Species, Environment, Forest Destruction, Forest Loss, Forests, Infrastructure, Mammals, Mangroves, Monkeys, Noise Pollution, Pollution, Primates, Protected Areas, Wetlands, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[JAKARTA — Tri Atmoko is a regular visitor to the mangrove forests of Balikpapan Bay on the east coast of Indonesian Borneo, where he studies proboscis monkeys, an endangered species best known for its comically large nose. He’d last gone there in 2022, he tells Mongabay recently. On his return this past June, areas of [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[JAKARTA — Tri Atmoko is a regular visitor to the mangrove forests of Balikpapan Bay on the east coast of Indonesian Borneo, where he studies proboscis monkeys, an endangered species best known for its comically large nose. He’d last gone there in 2022, he tells Mongabay recently. On his return this past June, areas of mangrove trees that were still intact before had now disappeared. “I found many new developments,” says Tri, a primatologist with Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN), a government body. “I observed numerous logistic ports being constructed for [the transportation of] materials like sand and rock. Mangrove areas, which were previously intact, are being cleared to build these ports.” All that construction material is headed a few kilometers inland to the biggest construction site in Indonesia: Nusantara, the new capital city being carved out of the Bornean jungle. The development’s footprint includes 3,000 hectares (7,400 acres) of mangrove forest, part of a 16,000-hectare (39,500-acre) mangrove belt that runs between Balikpapan Bay and the mouth of the Mahakam River. Nusantara is the signature project of President Joko Widodo, who kicked it off in 2019 with the aim of moving the seat of government from the overcrowded and rapidly sinking Jakarta by the time he leaves office in October 2024. But the project has been beset by ballooning costs (with the total tab now at an estimated $33 billion), repeated delays, and a reluctance by foreign investors to get involved. And as Jokowi, as the president is widely&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2024/09/wildlife-rich-mangroves-suffer-as-indonesia-ramps-up-construction-of-new-capital/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-286867</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Proposed copper mine modifications spark community outcry in Peru</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2024/03/proposed-copper-mine-modifications-spark-community-outcry-in-peru/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2024/03/proposed-copper-mine-modifications-spark-community-outcry-in-peru/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>11 Mar 2024 18:25:07 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Sarah Sax]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Alexandra Popescu]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2024/03/11180659/Mina_Las_Bambas2-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=279714</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Latin America, Peru, and South America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Air Pollution, Biodiversity, Conflict, Copper, Environment, Governance, Indigenous Peoples, Infrastructure, Land Rights, Mining, Noise Pollution, Pollution, and Water Pollution]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[In late December 2023, when communities in the southeastern Peruvian province of Cotabambas received a copy of proposed modifications to the Las Bambas copper mine, they were at first surprised, and then frustrated. The document, which arrived between Christmas and New Year’s, contained a proposal to almost double the mining operation but lacked detailed studies [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[In late December 2023, when communities in the southeastern Peruvian province of Cotabambas received a copy of proposed modifications to the Las Bambas copper mine, they were at first surprised, and then frustrated. The document, which arrived between Christmas and New Year’s, contained a proposal to almost double the mining operation but lacked detailed studies on its environmental impact on aquifers, wetlands and rivers, which are crucial to the communities. Yet, they were given mere weeks to send in comments. In response, around a dozen organizations sent a letter to the agency of environmental certification for sustainable investment (SENACE), requesting they annul the amendment. “They didn’t consult with us at all, they only sent notifications,” said Walter Contreras, a local leader of the Cotabambas Defense Front, one of several organizations that signed the letter. It was impossible to infer from the document what exactly the impacts were going to be for communities like his, which are directly in the mine’s impact zone. The open-pit mine of Las Bambas sits at 4,000 meters (13,100 feet) above sea level. It is one of the largest copper mines in the world, producing up to 2% of the world&#8217;s copper, a critical mineral for the clean energy transition. In theory, Las Bambas can produce 320,000 metric tons  of copper concentrate a year, but widespread protests over the social and environmental impacts of the mine and the transport of minerals have never allowed the mine to fulfill that potential. Piece of copper. Image by Marta&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2024/03/proposed-copper-mine-modifications-spark-community-outcry-in-peru/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-279714</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Keep it down: U.N. report lists ways to reduce ocean noise pollution</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/07/keep-it-down-u-n-report-lists-ways-to-reduce-ocean-noise-pollution/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/07/keep-it-down-u-n-report-lists-ways-to-reduce-ocean-noise-pollution/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>06 Jul 2023 21:02:30 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Elizabeth Claire Alberts]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Elizabethalberts]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2023/02/14111807/sperm-whale-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=270646</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, Cetaceans, Ecosystems, Global Environmental Crisis, Marine, Marine Animals, Marine Conservation, Marine Mammals, Noise Pollution, Oceans, Pollution, and Whales]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[A recent U.N. report lists tactics and recommendations for reducing human-caused ocean noise, a form of pollution that impacts marine life from tiny plankton to colossal whales. Published in June by the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), an environmental treaty of the U.N., the report outlines possible solutions to [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[A recent U.N. report lists tactics and recommendations for reducing human-caused ocean noise, a form of pollution that impacts marine life from tiny plankton to colossal whales. Published in June by the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), an environmental treaty of the U.N., the report outlines possible solutions to three primary sources of anthropogenic noise: shipping, seismic air gun surveys used to map the seafloor, and pile driving, which is the act of pounding structures into the seafloor to support offshore wind farms and other constructions. Many formal agreements, including the CMS, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and regional agreements like the Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic (OSPAR Convention), refer to the adoption of “best available technologies” and “best environmental practices,” but don’t necessarily specify what these technologies or practices should be. Lindy Weilgart, the report author and an underwater noise specialist at Dalhousie University in Canada, said the new report provides “a few possibilities” of these technologies and practices that can be applied to reduce ocean noise. A new UN report outlines possible solutions to three primary sources of anthropogenic noise: shipping, seismic air gun surveys, and pile driving. Image by Josef Grunig / Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0). “There are sometimes not very difficult fixes just to make the sound quieter,” Weilgart told Mongabay. “The purpose of the report was to take a little bit of emphasis away from constantly studying the impacts because we&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2023/07/keep-it-down-u-n-report-lists-ways-to-reduce-ocean-noise-pollution/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-270646</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Potential impact on whales overlooked as deep-sea mining looks set to start, experts say</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/02/potential-impact-on-whales-overlooked-as-deep-sea-mining-looks-set-to-start/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/02/potential-impact-on-whales-overlooked-as-deep-sea-mining-looks-set-to-start/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>14 Feb 2023 16:46:11 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Elizabeth Claire Alberts]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Elizabethalberts]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2023/02/14105758/humpbacks-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=265564</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Oceans]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global and Pacific Ocean]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, Cetaceans, Conservation, Deep Sea Mining, Dolphins, Endangered Species, Environment, Fish, Mammals, Marine, Marine Animals, Marine Conservation, Marine Mammals, Mining, Noise Pollution, Oceans, Research, Whales, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[The potentially imminent start of deep-sea mining in international waters could impact whales, dolphins and porpoises, particularly in terms of noise pollution, according to experts who say there needs to be urgent research into the issue. In a new perspective piece published in Frontiers in Marine Science, scientists from the University of Exeter, Greenpeace Research [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[The potentially imminent start of deep-sea mining in international waters could impact whales, dolphins and porpoises, particularly in terms of noise pollution, according to experts who say there needs to be urgent research into the issue. In a new perspective piece published in Frontiers in Marine Science, scientists from the University of Exeter, Greenpeace Research Laboratories, and Oregon State University say proposed deep-sea mining activities would likely produce a range of noises with frequencies that overlap with those used by cetaceans for communication purposes, potentially leading to behavioral changes in these animals. The authors say most assessments of deep-sea mining’s potential impact on biodiversity have focused on “species associated with the seabed and not mobile marine megafauna” like whales and dolphins. This is partly due to a paucity of data on cetaceans in proposed mining areas, says lead author Kirsten Thompson, a marine scientist at the University of Exeter in the U.K. “Cetaceans are a very diverse group of animals and most of what we know about them comes from studies closer to the coast and offshore islands,” Thompson tells Mongabay in an email. “Research in the open ocean is challenging and the fact that they have largely been overlooked in mining impact assessments is really a reflection of how little we know about the species that live there.” A pod of dolphins. The potentially imminent start of deep-sea mining in international waters could impact whales, dolphins and porpoises, particularly in terms of noise pollution. Image by Jeremy Bishop via&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2023/02/potential-impact-on-whales-overlooked-as-deep-sea-mining-looks-set-to-start/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/02/potential-impact-on-whales-overlooked-as-deep-sea-mining-looks-set-to-start/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-265564</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Tense neighbors: Chinese quarry in Cameroon takes a toll on locals</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/01/tense-neighbors-chinese-quarry-in-cameroon-takes-a-toll-on-locals/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/01/tense-neighbors-chinese-quarry-in-cameroon-takes-a-toll-on-locals/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>24 Jan 2023 20:07:12 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Yannick Kenné]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Latoya Abulu]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2023/01/24195812/Photo-1-scaled-e1672348313134-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=264925</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Land rights and extractives]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Africa, Cameroon, Central Africa, and West Africa]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Air Pollution, Environment, Environmental Policy, Industry, Land Conflict, Mining, Noise Pollution, Pollution, Social Justice, and Water Pollution]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[FEBE, Cameroon — In Febe, just six kilometres (about four miles) from Cameroon’s capital Yaoundé, a stone quarry overlooks a mountain slope and the bustling life of the village. Twice a month, the ground around the mine operated by the Chinese company Jinli Cameroon LLC vibrates as it launches huge explosives. A cloud of white [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[FEBE, Cameroon — In Febe, just six kilometres (about four miles) from Cameroon’s capital Yaoundé, a stone quarry overlooks a mountain slope and the bustling life of the village. Twice a month, the ground around the mine operated by the Chinese company Jinli Cameroon LLC vibrates as it launches huge explosives. A cloud of white dust soon fills the sky and several homes near the quarry tremble. One of these homes belongs to Ambroise Ondoa, a local leader. His house, not far off from the quarry, has seen better days. Severe weather damaged the roof and the walls are covered with deep cracks. The sixty-year-old is hunkered down with his family in the only room that still has a partial roof, desperately waiting to be able to save enough of their farming income to repair his home. His dilapidated home is partly the result of vibrations from intense quarry activity, he tells Mongabay. Homes on the slopes of Mount Nkol-Bifouan. Image by Yannick Kenné. “The after-effects are noticeable almost everywhere on the houses in this area. You only have to look at the impact on my house, with the roof destroyed and cracks all over the place. I’m not even the closest to the quarry,” explains Ambroise Ondoa. &#8220;We feel vibrations when they blast. It’s powerful enough to even knock down small children.” The company uses explosives to blast rubble before crushing it into various materials for sale. Basalt is a common stone mined in the quarry and is made&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2023/01/tense-neighbors-chinese-quarry-in-cameroon-takes-a-toll-on-locals/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/01/tense-neighbors-chinese-quarry-in-cameroon-takes-a-toll-on-locals/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-264925</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>New criminal code rings alarms for environmental protection in Indonesia</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2022/12/new-criminal-code-rings-alarms-for-environmental-protection-in-indonesia/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2022/12/new-criminal-code-rings-alarms-for-environmental-protection-in-indonesia/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>06 Dec 2022 15:02:54 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Basten Gokkon]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Basten Gokkon]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2022/04/05110853/forest-fire-in-Riau-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=263277</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Indonesia, and Southeast Asia]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Air Pollution, Crime, Environment, Environmental Law, Fires, Forests, Gold Mining, Law, Law Enforcement, Mining, Noise Pollution, Pollution, and Water Pollution]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[JAKARTA — Indonesia’s parliament has passed into law a sweeping set of amendments to the country’s Criminal Code, which experts have warned will weaken environmental protections. The House of Representatives on Dec. 6 unanimously decided to codify Indonesia’s penal code, a holdover from the Dutch colonial era and known as the KUHP, despite years of [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[JAKARTA — Indonesia’s parliament has passed into law a sweeping set of amendments to the country’s Criminal Code, which experts have warned will weaken environmental protections. The House of Representatives on Dec. 6 unanimously decided to codify Indonesia’s penal code, a holdover from the Dutch colonial era and known as the KUHP, despite years of criticism from experts and protesters arguing the changes would weaken law enforcement against environmental crimes. The new code is currently awaiting President Joko Widodo’s signature, after which a series of derivative regulations will be drafted before the law is fully enacted in 2025. “We condemn the passage of the Criminal Code Bill into law,” the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), the country’s largest green NGO, wrote in a social media post in the wake of the codification. Activists stage a protest in front of the Central Jakarta District Court before judges deliver their verdict in a citizen lawsuit related to air pollution in Jakarta. Image courtesy of the Capital City Coalition. Among the changes pertaining to environmental issues, experts reviewing the draft as of September said it would restore a provision codified in 1997 that a company has to be proven to be violating certain laws first before it can be prosecuted for environmental crimes. That provision was key in a successful defense by gold mining company PT Newmont Minahasa Raya against a lawsuit filed by the Indonesian government in 2005 for marine pollution. The company had been accused of dumping waste into Buyat&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2022/12/new-criminal-code-rings-alarms-for-environmental-protection-in-indonesia/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2022/12/new-criminal-code-rings-alarms-for-environmental-protection-in-indonesia/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-263277</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Will shipping noise nudge Africa’s only penguin toward extinction?</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2022/11/will-shipping-noise-nudge-africas-only-penguin-toward-extinction/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2022/11/will-shipping-noise-nudge-africas-only-penguin-toward-extinction/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>21 Nov 2022 18:54:48 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Leonie Joubert]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Rebecca Kessler]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2022/11/21182247/AP_2_TeganCarpenterKling_1-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=262808</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Oceans]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Africa and South Africa]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, Biodiversity Hotspots, Birds, Communication, Conservation, Conservation Technology, Ecology, Ecosystems, Environment, Extinction, Fish, Fisheries, Fishing, Global Environmental Crisis, In-situ Conservation, Marine, Marine Animals, Marine Conservation, Marine Protected Areas, Mongabay Data Studio, Noise Pollution, Oceans, Overfishing, Pollution, Protected Areas, Research, Saving Species From Extinction, Shipping, Solutions, Water, Wildlife, Wildlife Trade, Wildlife Trafficking, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[CAPE TOWN — Seabird ranger Eduard Drost was busy with a routine inspection in an African penguin colony off the South African coast in 2021 when he noticed a troubling number of sickly birds. “Some were emaciated, especially the chicks,” he recalls. “Their chest and hip bones were sticking out. Their bellies were flat, not [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[CAPE TOWN — Seabird ranger Eduard Drost was busy with a routine inspection in an African penguin colony off the South African coast in 2021 when he noticed a troubling number of sickly birds. “Some were emaciated, especially the chicks,” he recalls. “Their chest and hip bones were sticking out. Their bellies were flat, not rounded.” It looked as though they weren’t feeding well, and his colleagues at the nonprofit Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (SANCCOB), which helps monitor the colony, on Bird Island, agreed. As soon as a weather window opened, South African National Parks, a government agency, sent in a helicopter to airlift 95 starving chicks for hand rearing at a rehabilitation center on the mainland, 60 kilometers (37 miles) away in the port city of Gqeberha. This rescue is a red flag for marine conservationists. The African penguin (Spheniscus demersus) is expected to go extinct in the wild in just over a decade, given its current population decline. The main reason is a lack of food — sardines, mostly — caused by disruptions to ocean conditions from global heating and competition from the commercial fishing industry. Another colony in the same bay, on St. Croix Island, just 43 km (27 mi) away, has seen one of the most devastating population crashes in recent years. Annual head counts show that St. Croix’s penguin numbers dropped by 85% in five years, between 2016 and 2021. Scientists have identified a possible additional cause, one that is&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2022/11/will-shipping-noise-nudge-africas-only-penguin-toward-extinction/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2022/11/will-shipping-noise-nudge-africas-only-penguin-toward-extinction/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-262808</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>In revising its criminal code, Indonesia risks unraveling environmental laws</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2022/09/in-revising-its-criminal-code-indonesia-risks-unraveling-environmental-laws/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2022/09/in-revising-its-criminal-code-indonesia-risks-unraveling-environmental-laws/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>01 Sep 2022 16:23:22 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Hans Nicholas Jong]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Hayat Indriyatno]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2022/04/05111951/fire-used-for-land-clearing-Sumatra-Indonesia-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=259858</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Indonesia, and Southeast Asia]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Air Pollution, Crime, Environment, Environmental Law, Fires, Forests, Gold Mining, Law, Law Enforcement, Mining, Noise Pollution, Pollution, and Water Pollution]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[JAKARTA — An ambitious and long-anticipated plan by Indonesian lawmakers to revise the country’s criminal code, inherited from the Dutch colonial era, could make it much more difficult to prosecute polluting companies, experts warn. The latest draft of the revised penal code, known as the RKUHP, was only recently made publicly available after an uproar [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[JAKARTA — An ambitious and long-anticipated plan by Indonesian lawmakers to revise the country’s criminal code, inherited from the Dutch colonial era, could make it much more difficult to prosecute polluting companies, experts warn. The latest draft of the revised penal code, known as the RKUHP, was only recently made publicly available after an uproar over the government’s refusal to provide full public access to the draft. Experts reviewing it have since found provisions that they say could weaken law enforcement against environmental crimes. “If [the revised criminal code] is passed in the form of the latest draft [without further changes], I can assure [you] that there won’t be any environmental pollution cases that are criminally prosecuted,” Andri Gunawan Wibisana, a professor of environmental law at the University of Indonesia, said at a recent press conference in Jakarta. That’s in large part because the draft proposes rolling back a provision in the 2009 Environmental Protection Law, which states that prosecutors don’t have to prove that a company is violating other laws in order to charge it with an environmental crime. The previous version of the environmental law, which was passed in 1997 and which the revised criminal code bill intends to restore, says a company has to be proven to be violating certain laws first before it can be prosecuted for environmental crimes. This old provision was used by gold mining company PT Newmont Minahasa Raya in its successful defense against a lawsuit filed by the Indonesian government in 2005. The government,&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2022/09/in-revising-its-criminal-code-indonesia-risks-unraveling-environmental-laws/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2022/09/in-revising-its-criminal-code-indonesia-risks-unraveling-environmental-laws/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-259858</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Noise pollution spooks whales the way predators would, study finds</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2022/06/noise-pollution-spooks-whales-the-way-predators-would-study-finds/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2022/06/noise-pollution-spooks-whales-the-way-predators-would-study-finds/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>07 Jun 2022 10:41:51 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Grace Hansen]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[John Cannon]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2022/06/07095204/1-sperm-whales-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=256880</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Oceans]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Atlantic Ocean]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animal Behavior, Animals, Biodiversity, Charismatic Animals, Conservation, Dolphins, Endangered Species, Environment, Fellows, Fish, Mammals, Marine, Marine Animals, Marine Conservation, Marine Mammals, Noise Pollution, Oceans, Pollution, Research, Whales, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Generally, the word pollution conjures images of billowing smokestacks, oily water and trash-filled highway medians. But for whales, dolphins and porpoises, a subtler and perhaps more sinister source of pollution also poisons their realm: human-made sound. A study published March 21 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences supports the theory that noise [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Generally, the word pollution conjures images of billowing smokestacks, oily water and trash-filled highway medians. But for whales, dolphins and porpoises, a subtler and perhaps more sinister source of pollution also poisons their realm: human-made sound. A study published March 21 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences supports the theory that noise from technology such as military sonar systems causes problems for these cetaceans by spooking them into thinking predators are lurking nearby. &#8220;Personally I became motivated to study the effects of noise on whales during my PhD, as I often heard very loud human sounds while I was recording sounds of killer whales,&#8221; Patrick Miller, a professor of biology at the University of St. Andrews in the U.K. and one of the paper&#8217;s lead authors, said in an email. &#8220;It was during this time that it became clear that whales were being negatively impacted by ocean noise.&#8221; Researchers tag a northern bottlenose whale. Image by Captain Christian Harboe-Hansen courtesy of the University of St. Andrews. Whales occasionally beach themselves in connection with naval sonar, Miller said. Sometimes, dozens of whales will strand at a time, often leading to their deaths. The scientists&#8217; hypothesis held that cetaceans are especially vulnerable to human-caused noises in their environment because their hearing is adapted to identify specific sounds as dangerous, potentially indicating the presence of predators. Sounds made by killer whales, for example, are similar enough to human-created noises, such as naval sonar, that the animals may be unable to&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2022/06/noise-pollution-spooks-whales-the-way-predators-would-study-finds/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2022/06/noise-pollution-spooks-whales-the-way-predators-would-study-finds/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
					<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2022/06/07102216/predatory-killer-whale-sounds-1.mp4" length="1098586" type="video/mp4" />
<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2022/06/07102609/1-2-kHz-navy-sonar-sound.mp4" length="91876" type="video/mp4" />
					<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-256880</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Microplastics plus organic pollutants equals 10 times the toxicity, study finds</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2022/03/microplastics-plus-organic-pollutants-equals-10-times-the-toxicity-study-finds/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2022/03/microplastics-plus-organic-pollutants-equals-10-times-the-toxicity-study-finds/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>04 Mar 2022 13:21:25 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Elizabeth Claire Alberts]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Elizabethalberts]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2022/03/04125338/microplastics-in-a-freshwater-stream-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=253378</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Covering the Commons and Planetary Boundaries]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Chemicals, Conservation, Environment, Health, Industry, Microplastics, Noise Pollution, Plastic, Pollution, Public Health, Research, Waste, Water, and Water Pollution]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[A tiny, poppy seed-sized particle of plastic might seem innocuous on its own. But when a speck of plastic is coupled with organic pollutants, the chemical makeup of that plastic can swell with toxicity. A new study published in Chemosphere takes a close look at the interactions between microplastics — plastic pieces that are less [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[A tiny, poppy seed-sized particle of plastic might seem innocuous on its own. But when a speck of plastic is coupled with organic pollutants, the chemical makeup of that plastic can swell with toxicity. A new study published in Chemosphere takes a close look at the interactions between microplastics — plastic pieces that are less than 5 millimeters in size, or three-sixteenths of an inch — and trace organic compounds (TrOCs) found in pesticides, pharmaceuticals and personal care products, when they mingle in aquatic environments. While microplastics and TrOCs may not be overly toxic to humans when encountered separately, the researchers found that when these materials contact each other in water, the plastic’s toxicity can increase by a factor of 10. Interaction between microplastics and TrOCs could easily happen in wastewater plants, says study lead author Andrey Ethan Rubin, a Ph.D. student at Tel Aviv University in Israel. “Basically, none of those plants can fully treat organic materials, especially very strong organic materials,” Rubin told Mongabay in an interview. “Even here in Israel, we have very high amounts of antibiotics and other drugs that are released from the wastewater treatment plants and into the environment.” Another recent study also showed that many wastewater plants could not filter out tiny microplastics. These fragments are eventually released into streams and rivers, accumulating in the sediment. A recent study showed that many wastewater treatment plants could not filter out tiny microplastics. Image by Ryan Levi/KOMU 8 News via Flickr (CC BY 2.0). The&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2022/03/microplastics-plus-organic-pollutants-equals-10-times-the-toxicity-study-finds/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2022/03/microplastics-plus-organic-pollutants-equals-10-times-the-toxicity-study-finds/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-253378</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>‘Our land, our life’: Okinawans hold out against new U.S. base in coastal zone</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/11/our-land-our-life-okinawans-hold-out-against-new-u-s-base-in-coastal-zone/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/11/our-land-our-life-okinawans-hold-out-against-new-u-s-base-in-coastal-zone/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>25 Nov 2021 18:56:12 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Sheryl Lee Tian Tong]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Latoya Abulu]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2021/11/25174419/henokomusic2-1-768x512.png" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=249907</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Indigenous Peoples and Conservation]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Japan and United States]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Activism, Animals, Biodiversity, Biodiversity Hotspots, Conservation, Critically Endangered Species, Culture, Ecology, Ecosystems, Endangered Species, Environment, Environmental Policy, Forests, Global Environmental Crisis, Governance, Habitat Degradation, Habitat Loss, Human-wildlife Conflict, Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous Rights, Land Rights, Law, Mammals, Marine, Marine Animals, Marine Conservation, Noise Pollution, Oceans, Pollution, Protected Areas, Science, Water Pollution, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Defeat for Japan’s opposition party in last month’s national elections has dashed hopes for a quick resolution to the contentious relocation of a U.S. military base on the island of Okinawa — a move that the party had campaigned against. The proposed shifting of the Futenma Marine air base within Okinawa, from a densely populated [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Defeat for Japan’s opposition party in last month’s national elections has dashed hopes for a quick resolution to the contentious relocation of a U.S. military base on the island of Okinawa — a move that the party had campaigned against. The proposed shifting of the Futenma Marine air base within Okinawa, from a densely populated city to a less crowded coastal area, was agreed on between Tokyo and Washington in the 1990s. But local opposition has thwarted the move ever since, with critics pointing to its disastrous environmental impact, discrimination against Okinawans by mainland Japan, and the need for greater Indigenous autonomy and land rights. Okinawan activists, some of whom have been protesting against the relocation to Henoko Bay for decades, plan to continue their dissent following the defeat of the opposition Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP). “It’s really good this issue was on the table before the elections,” Shinako Oyakawa, an Indigenous and land rights activist, told Mongabay. But at the same time, Okinawans “should not [rely] on Japanese centralized political parties and mainland Japan,” she added. “We Okinawan people have to believe in ourselves and our Indigenous rights. It’s our land and our life. We have to take care of it. We can’t rely on the political policies of the Japanese government,” she said. Landfill work underway at Henoko Bay, the proposed new site of the Futenma Marine base. Image courtesy of the Okinawa Drone Project. ‘This problem is like a cancer here’ Japan has the most overseas U.S.&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2021/11/our-land-our-life-okinawans-hold-out-against-new-u-s-base-in-coastal-zone/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/11/our-land-our-life-okinawans-hold-out-against-new-u-s-base-in-coastal-zone/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-249907</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>If marine noise pollution is bad, deep-sea mining could add to the cacophony</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/11/if-marine-noise-pollution-is-bad-deep-sea-mining-could-add-to-the-cacophony/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/11/if-marine-noise-pollution-is-bad-deep-sea-mining-could-add-to-the-cacophony/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>24 Nov 2021 14:26:08 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Elizabeth Claire Alberts]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Elizabethalberts]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2021/11/24135930/5019925885_8af3886bee_o-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=249852</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Deep Sea Mining 2021]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Pacific Ocean]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Biodiversity, Cetaceans, Climate Change, Deep Sea, Deep Sea Mining, Ecosystems, Global Environmental Crisis, Marine, Marine Conservation, Marine Mammals, Mining, Noise Pollution, Oceans, and Pollution]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[It’s not easy to try to describe how a dolphin experiences sound in the ocean, says Lindy Weilgart, a noise pollution expert at Dalhousie University in Canada. “We have terrestrial ears and we’re in air, right?” Weilgart told Mongabay in a video call. “So you think, ‘Oh, so the ear’s a bit different,’ but it’s [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[It’s not easy to try to describe how a dolphin experiences sound in the ocean, says Lindy Weilgart, a noise pollution expert at Dalhousie University in Canada. “We have terrestrial ears and we’re in air, right?” Weilgart told Mongabay in a video call. “So you think, ‘Oh, so the ear’s a bit different,’ but it’s also how they receive sounds. We receive it directly into our inner ear, whereas for dolphins, it’s conducted through their lower jaw. And because [their bodies] are mostly water, the sound couples very efficiently into their bodies.” While reluctant to make a comparison, Weilgart said that dolphins and whales might experience underwater sound similarly to how we hear low pitches on a cranked-up stereo. “You would feel it in your lungs,” she said. “I suspect that&#8217;s more the case with whales and dolphins — it actually is a whole-body feeling as they&#8217;re immersed in the sound.” Whale and dolphin species have been known to stop feeding and vocalizing around certain types of human-made noise, such as sonar equipment, or to become disoriented and strand on shore, which is what happened to a pod of melon-headed whales (Peponocephala electra) in 2008 in Madagascar. Noise has also been shown to cause ear damage to fish called pink snappers (Chrysophrys auratus) and reduce the larval quality of Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua). Airguns have caused widespread death in krill and other kinds of zooplankton, and studies have even shown that human-made noise impairs aquatic plants like seagrass. A deep-sea&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2021/11/if-marine-noise-pollution-is-bad-deep-sea-mining-could-add-to-the-cacophony/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-249852</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Project maps soundscape of human noise in northern Adriatic and impact on marine life</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/10/project-maps-soundscape-of-northern-adriatic-and-impact-on-marine-life/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/10/project-maps-soundscape-of-northern-adriatic-and-impact-on-marine-life/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>19 Oct 2021 13:12:48 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Francesco Martinelli]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Genevieve Belmaker]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2021/10/19091345/bottlenose-dolphins-around-the-island-of-Losinj-Croatia-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=248312</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Croatia and Europe]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, Cetaceans, Communication, Conservation, Conservation Technology, Dolphins, Environment, Marine, Marine Animals, Marine Conservation, Marine Mammals, Noise Pollution, Oceans, Pollution, Research, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Croatia’s Lošinj archipelago is home to a large resident population of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus), which suffered a decline between 1995 and 2003. Driving the drop, among other factors, is the growing presence of tourist pleasure boats, which in the summer season frequent the waters of the archipelago. The presence of these boats represents a [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Croatia’s Lošinj archipelago is home to a large resident population of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus), which suffered a decline between 1995 and 2003. Driving the drop, among other factors, is the growing presence of tourist pleasure boats, which in the summer season frequent the waters of the archipelago. The presence of these boats represents a threat to the physical safety of dolphins, but also generates a disturbance more difficult to detect, but no less dangerous: noise. Bottlenose dolphins use sound waves to orient themselves, move and hunt and communicate; they are known to emit a wide variety of sounds, which can vary greatly in frequency, duration, and timing, depending on geography. The transmission and cultural learning of vocalizations makes them similar to regional dialects. Among the factors that influence these regional characteristics of dolphin sounds is the environmental disturbance that forces them into acoustic adaptation strategies. Studies have shown how, when exposed to sound pollution, dolphins can modify the frequency and timing of the sounds they emit. It’s similar to how we raise our voices when we try to talk during a concert. In terms of conservation, the exposure of dolphins to high levels of noise disturbance can lead to communication divergences that split populations of the same species, creating an ethological and reproductive barrier. Soundscape affects vocalization transmission and reception, and ultimately survival, so it could be the strongest selective pressure for acoustic emissions. And while their importance often underestimated, geographic variability and vocal identity are actually very important&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2021/10/project-maps-soundscape-of-northern-adriatic-and-impact-on-marine-life/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/10/project-maps-soundscape-of-northern-adriatic-and-impact-on-marine-life/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-248312</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Two threatened whale groups had a mini baby boom, but not because of lockdown</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/10/two-threatened-whale-groups-had-a-mini-baby-boom-but-not-because-of-lockdown/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/10/two-threatened-whale-groups-had-a-mini-baby-boom-but-not-because-of-lockdown/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>05 Oct 2021 15:45:43 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Laurel Neme]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Jeremy Hance]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2021/10/05120152/1-Right-whale-Catalog-3125-skim-feeding-in-Cape-Cod-Bay-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=247806</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Oceans]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Atlantic Ocean, Canada, North America, and United States]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Conservation, COVID-19, Critically Endangered Species, Endangered Species, Environment, Extinction, Fishing, Mammals, Marine, Marine Animals, Marine Conservation, Noise Pollution, Oceans, Research, Saving Species From Extinction, Solutions, and Whales]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[While the pandemic has increased stress levels for many people, the reduction in human activity has coincided with a rare spell of good news for whales. &#8220;I think, overall, the pandemic has largely been a positive for whales,” Ari Friedlaender, a marine biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, told NBC&#8217;s Today Show in [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[While the pandemic has increased stress levels for many people, the reduction in human activity has coincided with a rare spell of good news for whales. &#8220;I think, overall, the pandemic has largely been a positive for whales,” Ari Friedlaender, a marine biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, told NBC&#8217;s Today Show in March 2021. He explained that decreased human activity and a corresponding decline in vessel traffic and ocean noise might have reduced whale stress and that this, in turn, could help their overall health and ability to reproduce. Was that the case for two rare whale groups — the southern resident killer whales (Orcinus orca) and the North Atlantic right whales (Eubalaena glacialis) — which both had what might be called &#8220;mini baby booms&#8221; over the course of the pandemic? Both whale groups have small populations. The southern resident killer whales, which live in the Pacific Northwest (they normally summer in the Salish Sea off Washington state and British Columbia, and winter around the U.S. West Coast), number 73 individuals. The IUCN lists the conservation status of killer whales as data deficient, but the southern resident population is the only orca group listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. North Atlantic right whales, which migrate up and down the eastern seaboard of North America, number only about 356. This species is listed as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List. Southern Resident killer whales from pod breach. The southern resident killer whales number 73 individuals. Image&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2021/10/two-threatened-whale-groups-had-a-mini-baby-boom-but-not-because-of-lockdown/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/10/two-threatened-whale-groups-had-a-mini-baby-boom-but-not-because-of-lockdown/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-247806</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Do birds try to shout down airplanes? The evidence suggests they do</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2019/12/do-birds-try-to-shout-down-airplanes-the-evidence-suggests-they-do/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2019/12/do-birds-try-to-shout-down-airplanes-the-evidence-suggests-they-do/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>09 Dec 2019 07:17:53 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Malavika Vyawahare]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Malavikavyawahare]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2019/12/09065856/plane-botswana.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=225165</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[United States]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, Birds, Conservation, Noise Pollution, and Protected Areas]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[It’s sometimes easy to forget that birds have ears, craftily concealed as they are. Which is why the thunderous passage of airplanes sends ripples of disquiet in their ranks. Now, a sweeping analysis of nearly a million samples of bird vocalizations collected by scientists at the U.S. National Park Service (NPS) is offering surprising insights [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[It’s sometimes easy to forget that birds have ears, craftily concealed as they are. Which is why the thunderous passage of airplanes sends ripples of disquiet in their ranks. Now, a sweeping analysis of nearly a million samples of bird vocalizations collected by scientists at the U.S. National Park Service (NPS) is offering surprising insights into how birds process this noise. Instead of subduing bird vocalization, a plane passing by leads to an uptick in bird chatter, according to the research presented at the 178th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America on Dec. 4. The chances of hearing a bird increased by 2 percent when a plane is also heard in a 10-second audio clip. “The extensive presence of aircraft noise exposure in time and space implies that birds are chronically producing more sound in many locations,&#8221; Kurt Fristrup from the NPS, who presented the findings, said in a statement. It might seem like a trivial matter that birds become more boisterous as flights roar past, but it speaks to a broader question: what does an increase in air travel mean for the feathered fliers? Air travel has ballooned in the past two decades as flying costs have declined, and shows no sign of slowing down. According to an estimate from the European plane maker Airbus, the number of commercial planes will more than double in the next twenty years. Brown Pelicans (Pelecanus occidentalis) in flight. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay The sound associated with jet planes measures somewhere&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/12/do-birds-try-to-shout-down-airplanes-the-evidence-suggests-they-do/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2019/12/do-birds-try-to-shout-down-airplanes-the-evidence-suggests-they-do/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-225165</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>India’s Ganga River dolphins are being shouted down by noisy boats</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2019/11/indias-ganga-river-dolphins-are-being-shouted-down-by-noisy-boats/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2019/11/indias-ganga-river-dolphins-are-being-shouted-down-by-noisy-boats/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>12 Nov 2019 23:48:17 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Shreya Dasgupta]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Shreya Dasgupta]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2019/11/12110655/GRD_edit_Subhasis-Dey-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=224365</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, India, and South Asia]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, Conservation, Dolphins, Ecosystems, Endangered Species, Environment, Freshwater, Mammals, Noise Pollution, Research, Rivers, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[India’s Ganga is a noisy river. There’s the churning of sediment, the hums, grunts and growls of fishes and turtles. There are the cacophonous stretches of cities and industries breathing and dumping their waste into the river. Then there’s the constant din of boats and ships, and the clamor of heavy machinery dredging the riverbed. [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[India’s Ganga is a noisy river. There’s the churning of sediment, the hums, grunts and growls of fishes and turtles. There are the cacophonous stretches of cities and industries breathing and dumping their waste into the river. Then there’s the constant din of boats and ships, and the clamor of heavy machinery dredging the riverbed. These noises are only getting louder. And that’s stressing the Ganga River’s iconic dolphins (Platanista gangetica) and changing how they communicate, a new study has found. This is concerning, researchers say, since the Indian government has plans to expand the Ganga waterway, increasing the number and frequency of the ships that ply the river. “Over the last few years, there have been debates about the impacts of vessel traffic, noise, and dredging on endangered Ganges river dolphins,” Nachiket Kelkar, a researcher at the Ashoka Trust for Research, Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) in Bengaluru and co-author of the study, said in an email. “In these debates, many of the anticipated impacts, even those suggested by ecologists, were based on some knowledge of the system, but still they were speculative and lacked strong evidence from field studies. “This study was important to objectively demonstrate how underwater noise affected river dolphin behaviour and what implications it had for conserving them.” Ganga River dolphins, bottom right, alter their vocal activities in response to ship traffic. Image by Mayukh Dey. The Gangetic river dolphins are effectively blind; they don’t really have use for eyesight in the shallow, sediment-rich, murky&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/11/indias-ganga-river-dolphins-are-being-shouted-down-by-noisy-boats/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2019/11/indias-ganga-river-dolphins-are-being-shouted-down-by-noisy-boats/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-224365</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>On one island, a microcosm of Vietnam’s environmental challenges</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2019/04/on-one-island-a-microcosm-of-vietnams-environmental-challenges/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2019/04/on-one-island-a-microcosm-of-vietnams-environmental-challenges/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>22 Apr 2019 10:25:50 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Michael Tatarski]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Genevieve Belmaker]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2019/04/22091135/7571-1-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=217685</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Global Forests]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Southeast Asia, and Vietnam]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Conservation, Critically Endangered Species, Ecotourism, Endangered Species, Environment, Forests, Monkeys, Noise Pollution, Primates, Protected Areas, Rainforests, Tourism, Tropical Forests, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[CAT BA ISLAND, Vietnam – While approaching Hai Phong, a major city on Vietnam’s northeast coast, it is impossible to miss signs of the country’s fast-growing economic might. GDP growth hit just over 7 percent in 2018, and foreign investors are swarming: Samsung alone has invested nearly $20 billion here. A high-speed expressway now connects [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[CAT BA ISLAND, Vietnam – While approaching Hai Phong, a major city on Vietnam’s northeast coast, it is impossible to miss signs of the country’s fast-growing economic might. GDP growth hit just over 7 percent in 2018, and foreign investors are swarming: Samsung alone has invested nearly $20 billion here. A high-speed expressway now connects Hai Phong to Hanoi, the capital, and will eventually extend to the Chinese border farther north. We turned the opposite direction and rumbled down a broad road past under-construction factories and sprawling stacks of shipping containers. An enormous amount of land is being reclaimed from the sea for industrial zones advertised on billboards, while dozens of boats moored offshore pump water out of mud flats and into the Gulf of Tonkin. The 5.4-kilometer (3.4–mile) Tan Vu-Lach Huyen bridge, Vietnam’s longest cross-sea span, leads to a small island called Cat Hai, where fish farms give way to a colossal 336-hectare (830–acre) automobile and motorbike manufacturing complex run by Vinfast, a subsidiary of Vingroup, the country’s largest private corporation. Finally, we reached a run-down ferry crossing. Eight towering container cranes loom overhead, part of the expanding Lach Huyen International Port. Across a narrow stretch of water plied by huge cargo ships, a different type of skyline unfurls: the verdant, jagged limestone karsts of Cat Ba Island, a stunningly beautiful destination that attracts 2.5 million tourists a year, according to local media. The largest in the Cat Ba archipelago, which includes 365 other islands stretching into the Gulf&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/04/on-one-island-a-microcosm-of-vietnams-environmental-challenges/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2019/04/on-one-island-a-microcosm-of-vietnams-environmental-challenges/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-217685</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Environmental issues among top priorities of urban Indian voters: Report</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2019/04/environmental-issues-among-top-priorities-of-urban-indian-voters-report/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2019/04/environmental-issues-among-top-priorities-of-urban-indian-voters-report/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>02 Apr 2019 09:32:00 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Mayank Aggarwal]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Shreya Dasgupta]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2019/04/02074727/india_160374-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=217091</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, India, and South Asia]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Agriculture, Air Pollution, Drinking Water, Environment, Global Environmental Crisis, Green, Health, Mining, Noise Pollution, Public Health, Water, Water Pollution, and Water Scarcity]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[With India just a few weeks away from the general elections, a new survey has shed light on what the country&#8217;s voters want. The survey, released by the NGO Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) on March 25, found that clean drinking water and agriculture-related governance issues feature prominently in the Indian voters&#8217; list of priorities. [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[With India just a few weeks away from the general elections, a new survey has shed light on what the country&#8217;s voters want. The survey, released by the NGO Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) on March 25, found that clean drinking water and agriculture-related governance issues feature prominently in the Indian voters&#8217; list of priorities. High levels of water and air pollution, which have been plaguing Indian cities over the past few years, were not a top priority nationally but were of importance to the urban voters. To see what Indian voters’ priorities are and what they think of the government&#8217;s performance on those issues, researchers surveyed a total of 273,487 people across 534 constituencies of the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Parliament of India, between October and December 2018. At least 500 people were surveyed in each constituency. The 2019 Lok Sabha elections are scheduled to take place between April and May 2019. Overall, the voters prioritized employment and basic amenities like healthcare, drinking water and better roads above all governance issues, including terrorism and the combination of a strong defense and military. Drinking water came in third (30.5 percent of the respondents) behind employment and healthcare. In fact, the survey noted that the importance of drinking water as a priority for voters this year increased by 150 percent compared to 2017. However, when looking at rural areas alone, drinking water ranked seventh, after agricultural issues, which dominated voters&#8217; priorities. Ranking of governance issues, according to voters’ priorities.&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/04/environmental-issues-among-top-priorities-of-urban-indian-voters-report/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2019/04/environmental-issues-among-top-priorities-of-urban-indian-voters-report/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-217091</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>New research teases apart complex effects of naval sonar on whales</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2019/03/new-research-teases-apart-complex-effects-of-naval-sonar-on-whales/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2019/03/new-research-teases-apart-complex-effects-of-naval-sonar-on-whales/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>28 Mar 2019 03:49:22 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Mongabay.com]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[John Cannon]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2019/03/27111407/Wensveen-et-al-photo-4.4f1fd143861d424787b8828a62749206-768x450.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=216917</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Oceans and Sea Change]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Europe, Norway, Pacific Ocean, and United States]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, Conservation, Ecology, Ecosystems, Endangered Species, Environment, Mammals, Marine, Marine Animals, Marine Conservation, Noise Pollution, Oceans, Research, Technology, Water, Whales, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
											<grant>
							<![CDATA[2163-3717]]>
						</grant>
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Whales can behave quite differently in response to sonar depending on where they live and what they’re doing, new research has found. The pair of studies, on different species and in different oceans, adds to scientists’ understanding of how to protect whales from these sounds. Navies use sonar to detect stealthy submarines, and researchers have [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Whales can behave quite differently in response to sonar depending on where they live and what they’re doing, new research has found. The pair of studies, on different species and in different oceans, adds to scientists’ understanding of how to protect whales from these sounds. Navies use sonar to detect stealthy submarines, and researchers have linked sonar training exercises to hearing loss, deadly mass strandings, and interference with whale communication. Most strategies to temper the effects of sonar use the volume of the noise as a guide, Brandon Southall, a biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said in a statement. But loudness didn’t turn out to be the best predictor of blue whales’ (Balaenoptera musculus) responses to a series of sonar blasts in research published March 4 in the Journal of Experimental Biology. A blue whale creating a bow wave. Image by NOAA via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain). “Some whales responded when the sound was barely audible, while others seemingly ignored it and kept feeding at quite loud levels,” said Southall, the paper’s lead author. A separate study, on northern bottlenose whales (Hyperoodon ampullatus) in the Greenland Sea, found that these beaked whales — a group that’s among the most affected by sonar — changed their behavior, whether they were as close as 0.8 kilometers (0.5 miles) to the source of the sonar or as far away as 28 kilometers (17 miles). In that research, the scientists fixed data-gathering tags to 12 bottlenose whales and used underwater microphones&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/03/new-research-teases-apart-complex-effects-of-naval-sonar-on-whales/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2019/03/new-research-teases-apart-complex-effects-of-naval-sonar-on-whales/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-216917</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Pod-cast: New app streams whale songs for web users in real time</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2018/11/pod-cast-new-app-streams-whale-songs-for-web-users-in-real-time/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2018/11/pod-cast-new-app-streams-whale-songs-for-web-users-in-real-time/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>19 Nov 2018 14:06:50 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Sue Palminteri (1965-2019)]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Sue Palminteri]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2018/11/19135703/resident-KW_ShawnMcCready_CC-BY-ND-2.0_feature-2-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=212413</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Pacific Northwest and United States]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Acoustic, Artificial Intelligence, Bioacoustics, Citizen Science, Conservation, Conservation Solutions, Noise Pollution, Oceans, Open-source, Research, Sensors, Solutions, Technology, Whales, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Researchers have developed a web-based application to enable citizen scientists to listen to the sounds of killer whales in the northeast Pacific in real time. Publicly launched on Nov. 1, after several months of testing, the app livestreams audio from underwater microphones, called hydrophones, located in the Salish Sea off the U.S. state of Washington, [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Researchers have developed a web-based application to enable citizen scientists to listen to the sounds of killer whales in the northeast Pacific in real time. Publicly launched on Nov. 1, after several months of testing, the app livestreams audio from underwater microphones, called hydrophones, located in the Salish Sea off the U.S. state of Washington, through the internet to a user’s laptop, phone or tablet. The Orcasound project produced the app to help raise awareness and understanding about ocean noise, and where and when humans and whales overlap, by broadening the audience listening for the signals of known pods of killer whales (Orcinus orca) and other novel sounds, such as other marine animals or human activity. A killer whale, or orca, &#8220;porpoising&#8221; in the Hood Canal waterway, south of the Salish Sea in the U.S. state of Washington. Leaping out of the water can actually be energy-efficient for marine animals traveling at high speeds. Image by Minette Layne via Wikimedia Commons CC 2.0. Scott Veirs, an oceanographer and bioacoustics specialist, and his father, Val Veirs, a physicist, lead the project, which started with funding from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The project’s partners now include United States and Canadian fisheries agencies and several nonprofit organizations, including scientists who have studied ocean sounds in the region for more than 15 years to call attention to the damage caused by noise pollution in the ocean. The younger Veirs, Orcasound’s lead researcher, presented the new web app and spoke about&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2018/11/pod-cast-new-app-streams-whale-songs-for-web-users-in-real-time/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2018/11/pod-cast-new-app-streams-whale-songs-for-web-users-in-real-time/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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					<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-212413</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Whales and dolphins change the way they communicate in a noisy ocean</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2018/10/whales-and-dolphins-change-the-way-they-communicate-in-a-noisy-ocean/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2018/10/whales-and-dolphins-change-the-way-they-communicate-in-a-noisy-ocean/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>26 Oct 2018 10:43:39 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Mongabay.com]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[John Cannon]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2018/10/26013511/20110421-221244.479cfd945d0e45cea4ed53c967ccec00-768x450.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=211504</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Oceans]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Atlantic Ocean, Japan, Pacific Ocean, and United States]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, Conservation, Ecology, Ecosystems, Environment, Mammals, Marine, Marine Animals, Marine Conservation, Marine Mammals, Noise Pollution, Oceans, Oil Drilling, Research, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
											<grant>
							<![CDATA[CBO2017]]>
						</grant>
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Noise from ships changes the way that whales and dolphins communicate with each other, according to two studies published this week. Marine biologists know that an increasingly cacophonous ocean, filled with the din from shipping, seismic surveys and sonar, is undoubtedly impacting the animals that live there. Loud noises could be damaging the hearing of [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Noise from ships changes the way that whales and dolphins communicate with each other, according to two studies published this week. Marine biologists know that an increasingly cacophonous ocean, filled with the din from shipping, seismic surveys and sonar, is undoubtedly impacting the animals that live there. Loud noises could be damaging the hearing of marine mammals that are dependent on sound as a way of making sense of their three-dimensional world, and sonar blasts have been linked to the mass stranding of whales around the world. A bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) near Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Image courtesy of NASA (Public domain) via Wikimedia Commons. Now, two independent teams of scientists have shown that whales and dolphins alter the sounds that they make in response to the whirr of ships. University of Maryland marine biologist Helen Bailey and her team recorded the whistles of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) off the coast of the U.S. state of Maryland and published their work Oct. 24 in the journal Biology Letters. The researchers analyzed the characteristics of those calls and took note when they changed. They found that when there was more ambient sound, mostly from passing boats and ships, the dolphins switched to higher frequencies and streamlined their whistles. “It’s kind of like trying to answer a question in a noisy bar and after repeated attempts to be heard, you just give the shortest answer possible,” Bailey said in a statement. “Dolphins simplified their calls to counter the masking effects&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2018/10/whales-and-dolphins-change-the-way-they-communicate-in-a-noisy-ocean/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2018/10/whales-and-dolphins-change-the-way-they-communicate-in-a-noisy-ocean/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-211504</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Taking it slow can help reduce impacts of Arctic shipping on whales (commentary)</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2018/08/taking-it-slow-can-help-reduce-impacts-of-arctic-shipping-on-whales-commentary/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2018/08/taking-it-slow-can-help-reduce-impacts-of-arctic-shipping-on-whales-commentary/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>28 Aug 2018 15:24:23 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Matt Pine]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Mike Gaworecki]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2018/08/28150722/8131173_1200px-cropped-768x434.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=209784</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Arctic and Arctic Ocean]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Commentary, Conservation, Environment, Fish, Impact Of Climate Change, Mammals, Marine, Marine Animals, Marine Conservation, Marine Mammals, Noise Pollution, Research, Sea Ice, Whales, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[For 19th-century adventurers like Sir John Franklin, navigating a path through the ice-choked Northwest Passage — the Holy Grail of Arctic exploration — was a treacherous and often deadly undertaking. Today, thanks to climate change, traveling through the passage is quickly becoming another exotic option for cruise ship passengers — and an enticing shortcut for [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[For 19th-century adventurers like Sir John Franklin, navigating a path through the ice-choked Northwest Passage — the Holy Grail of Arctic exploration — was a treacherous and often deadly undertaking. Today, thanks to climate change, traveling through the passage is quickly becoming another exotic option for cruise ship passengers — and an enticing shortcut for cargo ships. But an increasingly ice-free Arctic means more than just a chance for a new sightseeing adventure: Significantly increased ship traffic is altering the submarine calm of one of the quietest places on Earth. That could have serious implications for marine mammals and fish that rely on sound for group cohesion, socializing, finding mates, navigating, and detecting threats. For a study just published in the Marine Pollution Bulletin, my colleagues and I sought to determine just how intrusive ship engines are on the Arctic soundscape and whether or not there are any changes ships can make to improve the aural environment for wildlife there. Marine mammals and fish make a variety of sounds for a variety of purposes. Bowhead whale songs intended to attract mates are complex and broadband. Other vocalizations (to navigate, for example) fall in a narrower range. Beluga whale vocalizations are highly variable, with tonal sounds and echolocation clicks in different sound ranges. Bearded seals also emit several different call types and fish have their own suite of grunts and pulses. Audiograms (hearing profiles) of marine mammals and fish show that their hearing ranges often overlap with those of vessel noise,&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2018/08/taking-it-slow-can-help-reduce-impacts-of-arctic-shipping-on-whales-commentary/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2018/08/taking-it-slow-can-help-reduce-impacts-of-arctic-shipping-on-whales-commentary/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-209784</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Red flags abound as a warming Arctic opens up to shipping</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2018/07/red-flags-abound-as-a-warming-arctic-opens-up-to-shipping/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2018/07/red-flags-abound-as-a-warming-arctic-opens-up-to-shipping/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>18 Jul 2018 08:09:29 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Basten Gokkon]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Basten Gokkon]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2018/07/16033201/22527975867_1c351a248e_k-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=208375</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Oceans]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Alaska, Arctic, British Columbia, Canada, and Russia]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Coastal Ecosystems, Conservation, Ecology, Environment, Environmental Policy, Extinction, Global Warming, Mammals, Marine Mammals, Noise Pollution, Oceans, Politics, Pollution, Sea Ice, Water Pollution, Whales, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
											<grant>
							<![CDATA[CBO2017]]>
						</grant>
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[KUCHING, Malaysia — Conservationists have called on governments and the private sector to do more to mitigate the impact of global shipping activities on marine ecosystems and communities in the Arctic. Commercial shipping along the northern routes that connect North America, Europe and Asia is expected to increase by 500 percent between 2015 and 2025. [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[KUCHING, Malaysia — Conservationists have called on governments and the private sector to do more to mitigate the impact of global shipping activities on marine ecosystems and communities in the Arctic. Commercial shipping along the northern routes that connect North America, Europe and Asia is expected to increase by 500 percent between 2015 and 2025. In Canada, that traffic, which includes container ships, oil tankers and cruise liners, is forecast to double between 2010 and 2020, then double again from 2020 to 2030. The port of Vancouver, for one, expects to see a 33 percent increase in the number of vessels that dock there in the next 10 years. Over in Russia, the current volume of cargo transported through the Northern Sea Route is at 6.8 million tons annually; the country aims to boost that figure significantly to 100 million tons by 2030. “That’s an enormous increase,” Andrew Dumbrille, manager of national oceans governance at WWF-Canada, said at a panel discussion at the 5th International Marine Conservation Congress (IMCC) in Kuching, Malaysia, on June 26. “Much of it is due to melting ice and opening sea routes, shorter routes, less fuel being used and shorter periods of getting goods to communities,” he added. A container ship carrying goods via Arctic waters. Image by Kees Torn/Flickr. About 90 percent of world trade is transported by sea, with ships and ports acting as the arteries and nodes of the global economy. The changes in ship traffic patterns reflect changes in the global&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2018/07/red-flags-abound-as-a-warming-arctic-opens-up-to-shipping/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2018/07/red-flags-abound-as-a-warming-arctic-opens-up-to-shipping/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-208375</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Cities need forests too: A call for forests amid our concrete jungles (commentary)</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2018/03/cities-need-forests-too-a-call-for-forests-amid-our-concrete-jungles-commentary/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2018/03/cities-need-forests-too-a-call-for-forests-amid-our-concrete-jungles-commentary/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>21 Mar 2018 11:32:16 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Alistair Monument]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Mike Gaworecki]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2018/03/21110353/Hong-Kong-c-Alice-Zhuang-WWF-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=204977</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, East Asia, Global, and Hong Kong]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Air Pollution, Biodiversity, Cities, Climate Change, Commentary, Conservation, Environment, Forests, Global Warming, Health, Noise Pollution, Pollution, Public Health, Research, and Water]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Human beings evolved among trees. Even today, hundreds of millions of people live in and around forests, and depend upon them directly for their food, fuel, and livelihoods. Many of us, however, now live in concrete jungles instead. More than half the world’s population lives in cities, and that’s set to rise to two-thirds — [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Human beings evolved among trees. Even today, hundreds of millions of people live in and around forests, and depend upon them directly for their food, fuel, and livelihoods. Many of us, however, now live in concrete jungles instead. More than half the world’s population lives in cities, and that’s set to rise to two-thirds — more than 6 billion people — by 2050. Yet we still depend on forests more than we think. Take Hong Kong, where I live, for example. It’s the very picture of a modern metropolis, and one of the most densely populated regions on Earth. Step back from the skyscrapers and the bustling streets, though, and nearly a quarter of Hong Kong is forested. Hong Kong’s forests were once home to a vast range of species, including elephants and tigers. But over the centuries, large areas were cleared, and most of the remaining trees were felled for fuel during the Second World War. Over the last half-century, however, forests have been making a comeback through active replanting and natural regeneration. Protected parks cover around 40 per cent of Hong Kong’s territory today, and, while there are no plans to reintroduce tigers, these parks harbor incredible biodiversity: more than 2,100 native plants, 50 species of mammals, over 500 species of birds, and 230 different butterflies. For a city of more than 7 million inhabitants, having these wild places around is critical, not just for nature but also for people. A wealth of research has shown that cities&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2018/03/cities-need-forests-too-a-call-for-forests-amid-our-concrete-jungles-commentary/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2018/03/cities-need-forests-too-a-call-for-forests-amid-our-concrete-jungles-commentary/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-204977</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>‘Ships, sonar and surveys’: Film explores impacts of a noisy ocean</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2017/09/ships-sonar-and-surveys-film-explores-impacts-of-a-noisy-ocean/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2017/09/ships-sonar-and-surveys-film-explores-impacts-of-a-noisy-ocean/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>21 Sep 2017 08:06:53 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[John Cannon]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[John Cannon]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2017/09/20154724/1280px-Researchers_conduct_autopsy_on_stranded_beaked_whale-768x451.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=199339</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Activism, Animal Behavior, Animals, Charismatic Animals, Climate Change, Conservation, Dolphins, Energy, Environment, Globalization, Mammals, Marine, Marine Animals, Marine Conservation, Marine Mammals, Mining, Noise Pollution, Oceans, Oil Drilling, Whales, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Animals in the world’s oceans have faced an ever-increasing cacophony in recent decades. They’re inundated with sonar intended to keep countries safe, air gun charges that help energy companies find new sources of oil and gas, and the sounds of the 60,000 commercial ships that ply the seas at any given time. A new film [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Animals in the world’s oceans have faced an ever-increasing cacophony in recent decades. They’re inundated with sonar intended to keep countries safe, air gun charges that help energy companies find new sources of oil and gas, and the sounds of the 60,000 commercial ships that ply the seas at any given time. A new film called “Sonic Sea” by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Imaginary Forces catalogs the growing risks that noise poses to whales, dolphins, and porpoises and what scientists and conservationists are doing about it. It’s up for the Best Science in Nature prize at the 2017 Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival beginning Sept. 24 in Jackson, Wyoming. The film &#8216;Sonic Sea&#8217; explores the impacts of sound in the ocean on whales, dolphins and porpoises. Image courtesy of Imaginary Forces Cetaceans, the group that includes whales, dolphins, and porpoises, depend on sound to communicate, to hunt and to avoid predators. “The problem is, in the ocean, we are injecting enormous amounts of noise, so much so that we are basically acoustically bleaching the ocean,” said bioacoustician Christopher Clark of Cornell University in the film. “All the singing voices of the planet are lost in that cloud of noise.” The recent uptick in sounds in the ocean has also been linked to lesions on cetaceans’ organs and hemorrhaging around their brains. It’s also been connected to mass strandings, in which large animals beach themselves, often with fatal consequences. Scientists suspect that they may be trying to get away from&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2017/09/ships-sonar-and-surveys-film-explores-impacts-of-a-noisy-ocean/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2017/09/ships-sonar-and-surveys-film-explores-impacts-of-a-noisy-ocean/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-199339</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Move to open U.S. Atlantic coast to oil drilling meets increased opposition</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2017/09/trump-admin-moves-to-open-atlantic-coast-to-oil-exploration-drilling-meeting-increased-resistance/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2017/09/trump-admin-moves-to-open-atlantic-coast-to-oil-exploration-drilling-meeting-increased-resistance/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>13 Sep 2017 15:17:17 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Mike Gaworecki]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Mike Gaworecki]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2017/09/12190023/5170400100_14e0feca99_o-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=199034</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Global Environmental Impacts of US Policy]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[North America and United States]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, Conservation, Ecosystems, Environment, Mammals, Marine, Marine Animals, Marine Conservation, Marine Mammals, Noise Pollution, Oceans, Oil, Oil Drilling, Whales, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[The Trump Administration has taken steps to open up the United States’ Atlantic waters to offshore oil exploration and drilling, sparking fierce resistance up and down the coast. For instance, Timothy O&#8217;Brien, a self-described “angler and sportsman” who is president of Tycoon Tackle, Inc. and serves on the Ecosystem and Ocean Planning Advisory Panel of [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
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							<![CDATA[The Trump Administration has taken steps to open up the United States’ Atlantic waters to offshore oil exploration and drilling, sparking fierce resistance up and down the coast. For instance, Timothy O&#8217;Brien, a self-described “angler and sportsman” who is president of Tycoon Tackle, Inc. and serves on the Ecosystem and Ocean Planning Advisory Panel of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, wrote in an op-ed in June that “My business and my customers&#8217; businesses will be hit hard if the exploration and drilling for oil off the Atlantic Coast goes forward. But it is not just angling that is at risk, the entire coastal economy and way of life is under threat.” O’Brien’s most immediate concern is that, before any drilling can begin, surveys of the Atlantic coastal region would first be performed by seismic airgun blasting. Continually blasting intense bursts of noise into the water every 10 to 12 seconds in order to determine what resources might lie beneath the ocean floor, seismic airguns are so loud they can be heard underwater as far as 2,500 miles away — and the blasting can go on for weeks or even months straight. “Studies have shown that this type of disturbance can decrease catch rates of commercial fish species by an average of 50 percent over thousands of square miles,” O’Brien notes. “Further, these blasts are known to harm marine mammals and other species that are vital to a healthy ecosystem.” O’Brien is far from alone in his opposition to the Trump&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2017/09/trump-admin-moves-to-open-atlantic-coast-to-oil-exploration-drilling-meeting-increased-resistance/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-199034</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Manmade noise pollution even more prevalent in US protected areas than researchers expected</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2017/05/manmade-noise-pollution-is-even-more-prevalent-in-us-protected-areas-than-researchers-expected/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2017/05/manmade-noise-pollution-is-even-more-prevalent-in-us-protected-areas-than-researchers-expected/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>16 May 2017 11:18:36 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Mike Gaworecki]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Mike Gaworecki]]>
					</author>
															<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2017/05/16111548/Photo-for-noise-in-US-protected-areas-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=195756</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[North America and United States]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, Conservation, Environment, Health, Noise Pollution, Planetary Health, Plants, Protected Areas, Research, Roads, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Humans make quite a racket, and all of the excessive noise we make is not just a problem in urban areas. About 14 percent of the land mass in the United States has been afforded some kind of legally protected status, and noise pollution is noticeable even in these more remote areas where manmade disturbances [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Humans make quite a racket, and all of the excessive noise we make is not just a problem in urban areas. About 14 percent of the land mass in the United States has been afforded some kind of legally protected status, and noise pollution is noticeable even in these more remote areas where manmade disturbances are supposed to be kept to a minimum. According to a study published this month in the journal Science, the noise pollution from airplanes, highways, industry, and resource extraction is encroaching ever further into U.S. protected areas designed to preserve habitat for biodiversity. Rachel Buxton, a post-doctoral researcher at Colorado State University’s Warner College of Natural Resources and lead author of the study, led a team of researchers that recorded sounds at 492 sites across the country in order to quantify the extent of noise pollution in the U.S. Using baseline sound levels for each study area established by machine learning algorithms that took into account geospatial features of the area, the researchers determined that anthropogenic noise pollution exceeds three decibels (dB), essentially doubling background sound levels, in 63 percent of the nation’s protected areas. In 21 percent of protected areas, the team measured 10 dB of noise pollution, close to a ten-fold increase over background levels. Wilderness areas with some of the highest levels of protections were found to have the lowest amount of noise pollution, though 12 percent of those areas still experience manmade sound levels at least three dB above natural levels,&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2017/05/manmade-noise-pollution-is-even-more-prevalent-in-us-protected-areas-than-researchers-expected/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-195756</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Whalesong, interrupted</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2016/09/whalesong-interrupted/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2016/09/whalesong-interrupted/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>23 Sep 2016 01:17:22 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Melati Kaye]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Rebecca Kessler]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2016/09/01190550/092216-MKaye_Whalesong_Humpback2-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=189587</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Oceans]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Global, Philippines, and Southeast Asia]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, Conservation, Ecology, Ecosystems, Environment, Environmental Policy, Islands, Marine, Marine Animals, Marine Conservation, Noise Pollution, Oceans, and Whales]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Crossbow in hand, Jo Marie Acebes strides the deck of the outrigger fishing boat she has refitted for tracking whales off the Philippines’ Babuyan Islands. She’s scanning for a target in the very same waters that Herman Melville extolled as the gateway to the Yankee whalers’ Pacific hunting grounds in Moby Dick. On the deck, [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Crossbow in hand, Jo Marie Acebes strides the deck of the outrigger fishing boat she has refitted for tracking whales off the Philippines’ Babuyan Islands. She’s scanning for a target in the very same waters that Herman Melville extolled as the gateway to the Yankee whalers’ Pacific hunting grounds in Moby Dick. On the deck, the sounds are as placid as the vista of flat, steely ocean stretching to the horizon. Nothing to be heard but the whistling wind and the slap of gentle waves against the hull. But 20 meters down, where Acebes has suspended an underwater microphone, there’s an entirely different soundscape: a brisk a cappella fugue performed by two voices, a pair of humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) that may be located dozens of miles from the boat and each other. One humpback takes up the theme and the other follows a few seconds later with the exact same series of sounds: three ascending whoops, then two low moans. This series repeats for a quarter of an hour before the leviathans switch to a sequence of whines, purrs, and pips. https://mongabay-images.s3.amazonaws.com/16/Babuyan-1_Amp.mp3 Humpback whale calls. Audio courtesy of Balyena Humpbacks and other whales forage, breed, and migrate in small, far-flung pods in an underwater milieu where sound waves travel four times faster than in air and reach much farther than light rays. In the course of their 48-million-year evolution, whales have developed a sophisticated array of vocal signals and exquisitely attuned mechanisms to produce and receive sounds. For instance,&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2016/09/whalesong-interrupted/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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					<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-189587</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>New study identifies acoustic sanctuaries for marine mammals</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2016/01/new-study-identifies-acoustic-sanctuaries-for-marine-mammals/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2016/01/new-study-identifies-acoustic-sanctuaries-for-marine-mammals/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>12 Jan 2016 00:47:40 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Mike DiGirolamo]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Mongabay Editor]]>
					</author>
															<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2016/01/02223254/Acoustics7_dolphin-belly_EA1-390x330.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Canada]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Conservation, Mammals, Marine, Marine Animals, Marine Conservation, Marine Mammals, Noise Pollution, Oceans, and Research]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Imagine living in an environment of constant noise where you cannot get anything accomplished. Ocean noise pollution caused by shipping, oil and gas development, and other human activities is making this the reality for marine mammals in many places, interfering with their ability to detect prey and communicate with one another. Yet some areas of [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Imagine living in an environment of constant noise where you cannot get anything accomplished. Ocean noise pollution caused by shipping, oil and gas development, and other human activities is making this the reality for marine mammals in many places, interfering with their ability to detect prey and communicate with one another. Yet some areas of the ocean remain refuges of quiet. A new study has identified some of these acoustic sanctuaries off the coast of British Columbia in the hope that they may be protected. The study, which was published in Marine Pollution Bulletin, identifies these quiet spaces as “opportunity sites.” “They represent places where we could protect animals simply by maintaining the status quo,” Rob Williams, lead author of the study, told Mongabay. Williams, a marine conservation biologist, is co-founder of the research nonprofit Oceans Initiative, which is based in Seattle and Alert Bay, British Columbia. One challenge to identifying and preserving these environments is that marine mammals differ in where they live and in their sensitivity to noise. “[E]ach species has different distribution and habitat preferences within a country’s territorial waters, and different species with different hearing anatomy will hear the same sound differently. What is noisy to one species may seem quiet to another,” Williams said in an email. Mother killer whale with her baby. Photo by Dr. Rob Williams. For the study, he and his co-authors developed detailed maps showing how risk from noise varies across the region for 10 marine mammal species living there. To&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2016/01/new-study-identifies-acoustic-sanctuaries-for-marine-mammals/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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					<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-173731</doi>				</item>
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