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HabitatsHabitats for plants and animals that are at environmental risk include almost all places on the planet including forests for disease, drought and logging; rain forests for logging and drought; lakes and rivers for water usage efficiency and pollution; oceans for warming, increasing CO2 levels, and pollution from plastic garbage and other wastes; wetlands for losses due to agriculture; and deserts from urban sprawl. Animals in these habitats are at risk…from the tiniest insects to the largest mammals and fish. Plants are at risk from pollution and damage or loss of habitats. The environmental issues concerning these habitats have a common theme: human’s increasing impacts on the habitats and ecosystems that allow them to survive.
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Latest Habitats Content  | | Article Details: The US government on Wednesday declared the polar bear a threatened species under federal environmental protection laws, a ruling that may further limit efforts to develop US energy resources in Alaska. Advocates of increased US domestic energy development have long sought access to oil and gas reserves in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) on Alaska’s north coast. Environmentalists have opposed drilling in the refuge on grounds it would disrupt and endanger the wildlife that ANWR was cr | |
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|  | | Article: | | | | Published: | 4/30/2008 by L.A. Times (Gary Ferguson) | | | Submitted by: | Frank K 52 days ago | | | Categories: | Habitats & Animals |
| Article Details: The gray wolf was removed from the endangered species list on March 28, 2008, an act which has since ignited a killing spree in the northern Rocky Mountains. In Wyoming alone, at least 16 wolves have been shot since they came off the federal endangered species list on March 28 -- including two within the first 24 hours, ambushed by hunters waiting near an elk wintering ground. | |
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|  | | Article: | | | | Published: | 4/1/2008 by Heartland Institute (James M. Taylor) | | | Submitted by: | Frank K 52 days ago | | | Categories: | Habitats & Wetlands |
| Article Details: The U.S. EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers are squaring off over an Army Corps proposal to seasonally drain 67,000 acres of wetlands adjacent to the lower Mississippi River. The Army Corps wants to spend $220 million to build a pumping station in the Yazoo River Basin arguing that the project is necessary to protect agricultural lands and approximately 1,000 homes from potential flooding. | |
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| | |  | | Article Details: Converting rainforests, peatlands, savannas, or grasslands often far outweighs the carbon savings from biofuels resulting in tons of carbon emitted into the atmosphere. If you're trying to mitigate global warming, it simply does not make sense to convert land for biofuels production. Global agriculture is already producing food for six billion people. Producing food-based biofuel, too, will require that still more land be converted to agriculture. | |
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|  | | Article Details: A "plastic soup" of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean is growing at an alarming rate and now covers an area twice the size of the continental United States. The vast expanse of debris – in effect the world's largest rubbish dump – is held in place by swirling underwater currents. This drifting "soup" stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan. | |
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| | |  | | Article Details: Eutrophication is a syndrome of ecosystem responses to human activities that fertilize water bodies with nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P), often leading to changes in animal and plant populations and degradation of water and habitat quality. Nitrogen and phosphorus are essential components of structural proteins, enzymes, cell membranes, nucleic acids, and molecules that capture and utilize light and chemical energy to support life. | |
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|  | | Article Details: In Colorado entrepreneurs are vying to eke their fortune from the state's surging tide of beetle-ravaged timber. Some of these entrepreneurs are felling trees, seeking to revive the state's timber industry. Others use the wood, tinted blue from a fungus the beetles inject into the pine, for cabinets, unique ceiling panels, exterior siding and even kitchen backsplashes. | |
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| | |  | | Article Details: A vast swath of the Pacific, twice the size of Texas, is full of a plastic stew that is entering the food chain. Scientists say these toxins are causing obesity, infertility...and worse. It is dubbed the "Eastern Garbage Patch" by scientists.
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|  | | Article: | | | | Published: | 8/5/2007 by Time Magazine (Michael Grunwald) | | | Submitted by: | Frank K 52 days ago | | | Categories: | Habitats & Wetlands |
| Article Details: The most important thing to remember about the drowning of New Orleans is that it wasn't a natural disaster. It was a man-made disaster, created by lousy engineering, misplaced priorities and pork-barrel politics. The real culprit was the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which bungled the levees that formed the city's man-made defenses and ravaged the wetlands that once formed its natural defenses. | |
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| | |  | | Article: | | | | Published: | 10/19/2006 by MSNBC (Mike Stuckey) | | | Submitted by: | Frank K 52 days ago | | | Categories: | Habitats & Wetlands |
| Article Details: Federal wetlands regulators have dropped a bombshell on environmentalists with a little-publicized proposal to relax restrictions on filling in certain wetlands along the entire Mississippi Gulf Coast to speed recovery from Hurricane Katrina. “It’s unethical, illegal, immoral, unsustainable and they’re simply doing it to make the fat cats richer faster,”said Derrick Evans, of a Gulfport, Miss., community group. | |
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|  | | Article Details: The authors'analysis suggests that the global ocean has lost more than 90% of large predatory fishes. This is the first analysis to show general, pronounced declines of entire communities across widely varying ecosystems. The potential ecosystem effects of removing 90% of large predators from the open oceans is bound to be widespread, and possibly difficult to reverse. | |
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