Notes from a rare planet: Record 333 rhinos killed in South Africa last year

“Ten of the rhino were black rhinos, which are listed as Critically Endangered by the IUCN Red List, the rest were white rhinos, listed as Near Threatened. In total South Africa has over 20,000 rhinos.”
“Only a concerted international enforcement pincer movement, at both ends of the supply and demand chain, can hope to nip this rhino poaching crisis in the bud,” said Tom Milliken, Director of TRAFFIC’s East and Southern Africa program, in a news release.”

Isolating captive, disease-free populations seems like the best bet for the Tasmanian devils. Let’s hope these scientists succeed.

“The researchers found that concentrations of particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide were closely tied to visibility, which fell to an average of 12.6 kilometers, or 7.8 miles, in the last few years from around 9 miles in the early 1990s.”

“There was a strong correlation between turtles’ size and age and the incidence of fibropapillomatitis: by some margin, the disease occurred most frequently in juveniles and young adults. It is during that period of their growth that green turtles return to coastal environments after spending their early years in pelagic waters; furthermore, van Houten and colleagues found that some specific coastal areas had high incidence of the disease, while others had none. Those areas where the disease was found with greater frequency were the ones where agricultural development had resulted in high rates of runoff of nutrients, particularly nitrogen.”

“The online survey, which tallied responses from 1,299 respondents in October 2010, found that compared with women, men are almost twice as likely to believe that shopping green makes no difference. In fact, 16 percent of men felt that shopping green doesn’t make a difference and 13 percent think the green movement is nothing more than a marketing ploy.”

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