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BIODIVERSITY
AND HUMAN HEALTH
ISSUES IN THE NEWS
Topic Categories
Threats
to Biodiversity
- Brazil
recovers $25 million of illegally cut mahogany. February
21, 2002. Reuters. Brazil's environmental agency, Ibama, has seized
220,000 square feet of "poached" mahogany and is floating
the wood down the rivers of the Amazon jungle as part of its biggest
ever operation to stop illegal loggers.
- Sea
turtles under siege from egg poachers, pollution, and human development.
December 07, 2001. AP.
- Development
threatens California wildlife habitat.
Aug 20, 2001. Almost 60 percent of the secret trails used by California's
wildlife to travel between healthy habitat patches are threatened
by development. The loss of these corridors threatens not only the
future health but the very existence of the state's most charismatic
animal species, according to a recent report issued by 160 biologists.
- Sharks
need protection from overzealous fishermen.
Aug 9, 2001. It's the "summer of the shark," with attacks
against swimmers in the United States and the Caribbean making gruesome
headlines. Peter Benchley, the best-selling author whose novel Jaws
made a whole generation afraid to go into the water, is now campaigning
in defense of the sharks he helped to make infamous.
- Japanese
whaling expedition kills 158 whales. Aug. 8, 2001. Japanese
ships returned from an expedition in the northwest Pacific with
a quarry of 158 whales, 70 more than last year's hunt. They added
Bryde's and sperm whales to the usual catch of Minke, the government
said this week.
- Climate
change a new threat for the most endangered seal in the world.
July 25, 2001. World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). global warming
poses a new threat to the ringed seals of Lake Saimaa, in Finland,
which with only 250 individuals left in the wild, is the most endangered
seal species in the world. Saimaa ringed seals normally give birth
to their cubs in a den built of snow. The den protects the animals
against cold weather and predators.
- Climate
change threatens blue whales' food supply.
July 19, 2001. Reuters. Melting polar ice is threatening the main
food source for Antarctic blue whales and could lead to their extinction,
an international environmental group said Thursday. The whales feed
on small sea creatures known as krill, which in turn eat microscopic
marine algae. The algae live in sea ice and are released in the
summer when the ice melts.
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Biodiversity
Value News Stories
Environmental
Impacts on Human Health
- Kids
lungs stunted by air pollution. December 18, 2001. ENN.
- Investigators
probe risk of toxics to human reproduction. Aug 21, 2001.
ENN. Human reproduction, fetal and child development are vulnerable
to chemicals in the environment and other environmental factors.
New knowledge about the human genome is providing clues to how genes
and the environment interact to cause developmental defects.
- World
water crisis will threaten one in three. Aug 13, 2001. Reuters.
A looming water crisis could threaten one in three people by 2025,
sparking as much conflict this century as oil did in the last, the
U.N.-sponsored Third World Water Forum said in a statement Monday.
- Pollution
threatens community health in Nigeria. Aug
7, 2001. Reuters. Unless the Nigerian government takes appropriate
measures, communities in Nigeria's southern state of Ondo will suffer
outbreaks of water-borne diseases due to the contamination of their
fresh water sources by oil exploration activities.
- Premature
births in the 1960s linked to DDT. July 20, 2001.
Environmental News Network. The use of the pesticide DDT across
the United States has been linked to premature births in the 1960s
in a study conducted by the National Institute of Environmental
Health Sciences and other federal health agencies and published
in the medical journal Lancet. DDT is no longer produced
in the United States the researchers are still worried about the
effects of the pesticide in those 25 countries where it is still
used, largely to control the mosquitoes that carry malaria.
Emerging
and Re-emerging Infectious Diseases
- West
Nile virus detected in Canadian birds. Aug 21, 2001. Reuters.
The potentially deadly West Nile virus has been detected in early
tests of two dead birds found in the province of Ontario, which
could mark the first time the virus has made its way into Canada.
- More
Than Just a Nuisance, the Mosquito Is a Virtuoso of Disease.
Aug 7, 2001. New York Times. For millions of people, including thousands
in this country each year, the mosquito is far more than a pest.
For them this insect — a quarter-inch long and weighing a tiny
fraction of an ounce — carries serious disease and sometimes
death.
- West
Nile virus strikes Florida horses.
July 24, 2001. ENN. The first equine case of West Nile virus (WNV)
in the United States this year has been confirmed in a Florida horse
by the National Veterinary Services Laboratories in Ames, Iowa.
The positive horse was located in Jefferson County, Florida.
Global
Climate Change in the News
- Limiting
Greenhouse Gases in India and China.
Aug. 7, 2001. A series of studies conducted by Daniel Sperling,
PhD, of the Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS) at the University
of California at Davis is pinpointing inexpensive ways to curb heat-trapping
emissions from the transportation sector in developing countries.
Alien
Invasions
-
Zebra
mussels continue to be a problem. Aug 22, 2001. ENN. It
took less than 10 years. Nonnative zebra mussels from Europe first
appeared in the Mississippi River in 1991, and today the exploding
zebra mussel population has carpeted some parts of the Mississippi
River bed with 10,000 to 20,000 mussels per square yard.
-
Study
shows perils of importing nonnative species. Aug 17, 2001.
Reuters. Documenting the ecological perils of introducing nonnative
species to control pests, researchers said this week that parasitic
wasps brought to Hawaii as part of sugar cane farming had become
the dominant players in a native ecosystem.
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