By Barbara Kessler

Polar bears, penguins, pandas have become symbols of the fight to save wild places around the world and push back global warming.

According to conservationists meeting in Barcelona this week, they have a host of company. A broad assessment of the world’s mammals reveals an “extinction crisis” with nearly one-quarter of known mammal species at risk of disappearing forever due to habitat loss, pollution, global warming, over-hunting and food chain erosion.

The study, unveiled at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Conservation Congress, shows that 1,141 (and possibly nearly 2,000) of the world’s 5,487 mammals are known to be threatened with extinction.

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By Barbara Kessler

Gray wolves, all but de-listed from the Endangered Species Act protections through a series of government steps this year, have won a reprieve. According to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service official, the government will be withdrawing its declaration that the animals are fully recovered.

The move, reported by the Associated Press and various conservation groups, follows a federal court decision this summer that sided with environmentalists arguing that the wolves need continued protections.

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By Kelly Rondeau

Three major charities — The World Wildlife Fund, the Lance Armstrong Foundation and ninemillion.org– benefited from the Nike + Human Race 10K on Sunday, an event billed as the World’s Biggest Race that involved 25 races in 25 cities around the globe.

Thousands of runners turned out for the 10K in the North American host cities of New York City, Los Angeles, Portland, Chicago and Austin, as well as around the world in other major cities such as Paris, Rome, Madrid, Vancouver, Lima, Instanbul, Singapore, Melbourne, Warsaw, and Seoul. Collectively, the runners logged more than 3 million miles, according to Nike, with each mile producing more money toward the three charities.

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By Barbara Kessler

If you’ve been wondering about all the buzz over honeybees, here is some food for thought – or rather some thought about food: Bees play a role in one out of every three bites of food Americans eat.

Pollinators, mainly bees, but also butterflies, songbirds and even bats, perform such a critical function in the food chain that their absence threatens everything from the viability of vast fields of commercial corn and other crops to the tomatoes in your garden. Without the bees and other pollinators, plants can fail to produce the fruits and seeds we eat.

Which is why a San Francisco-based group called the Pollinator Partnership has dedicated itself to the survival of pollinators — from hummingbirds to small mammals to the fragile and busiest pollinators of them all, the bees. Partnership members, along with beekeepers and researchers testified before Congress last week to lobby lawmakers for more funding to research the decline of many pollinators, particularly the loss of millions of bees around the world to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).

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By Shermakaye Bass

In light of recent European bans of a pesticide linked to Bee Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), at least one key bee expert is calling for a ban of the same pesticide in the United States.

“In the United States, drastic action is needed,” says Canadian geneticist Joe Cummins, explaining that U.S. farmers and beekeepers shouldn’t have to wait for more evidence or for an air-tight explanation for the complex syndrome, which threatens one in every third bite of food in the United States. Now most apiarists and scientists realize that pesticides are a factor in CCD, he says.

Cummins’ remarks, in an interview with GreenRightNow, come less than a month after Germany’s ban of clothianidin, a pesticide commonly used to keep insects off of corn crops. Germany banned the pesticide after heaps of dead bees were found near fields of corn coated in the pesticide, and in response to scientists who report that the insecticide severely impairs, and often kills, the honeybees that corn and other crops depend on for pollination.

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By Barbara Kessler

Wonder how the gray wolves are faring since they were “delisted” from protection under the Endangered Species Act? One of the three Rocky Mountain states with a significant gray wolf population, Idaho, is having meetings to determine the rules for the hunting of the wolves this fall.

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By John DeFore

Are polar bears in danger of extinction? U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken in Oakland wants to know, and has given the Bush administration two more weeks to find out.

Judge Wilken said today that the administration had no legitimate reason for failing to meet a January 9 deadline (one year after the bear was proposed for listing) on declaring the bears endangered or not. The judge

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By John DeFore
The blogosphere overflows with examples of artists who use recycled or reclaimed materials in ways ranging from the whimsical to the architectural. Even given that diversity, though, an effort that came to light last week is something special.
The street-art fans known as the Wooster Collective posted the images above at their site on [...]

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By Barbara Kessler

The story of the Rocky Mountain gray wolves is an inspiring fairy tale, in reverse, that showcases nature’s ability to sustain its own given a little time, the right habitat and a helping hand from conservation groups.

The tale begins like this. Once there was a wild and foreboding territory called the American West. The land stretched far and the big bad (some would say awesome and beautiful) wolves were plentiful, numbering in the tens of thousands. But the pioneering spirit was turning the wild landscape into ranches and towns, railroads and highways. The buffalo and the elk were in retreat. And then, it was the wolves’ turn. Deprived of their natural prey, they turned to sheep and cattle and confronted a fierce foe, an enemy with guns.

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By Barbara Kessler

We’ve all been hearing a lot about “change” these days, whether it’s from Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama or John McCain. The World Wildlife Fund, that dogged global rescuer of endangered species, would like change too – your change.

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Photo: Mid-Atlantic Apiculture Research and Extension Consortium

Worker bees

By Shermakaye Bass

A year and a half ago, news of a mysterious phenomenon captured the country’s attention – something known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) that was affecting up to 30 percent of America’s commercial honeybee producers, whose mobile apiaries pollinate one-third of the country’s food supply.

For months, the international media carried reports on CCD (essentially a disappearing act by America’s worker honeybees), projecting repercussions that would drive produce and dairy prices through the roof and eventually cause large-scale food shortages in the U.S.

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By Bill Marvel
We welcome birds and butterflies into our backyards. But what about the little brown snake that slithers out from under the flowerpot? And those weird gummy lizards hanging around the porch light? And — ugh! — toads? Do we really want to share our environment with . . . creeping things?

Photo: Jeff Ettling [...]

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