The double-whammy of global warming and a record-breaking El Niño are having yet another detrimental effect, killing massive amounts of sea life off of the coast of Chile. Being blamed is an algal bloom that is choking the waters of the Pacific, killing fish such as cuttlefish, salmon and sardines, and may be responsible for the deaths of over 300 whales that washed ashore last year.
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The World Wildlife Fund has recently announced some good news on the animal conservation front: the number of tigers living in the wild has increased for the first time since records started to be taken in the early twentieth century. There are at least 3,890 tigers in the wild, up from an estimated 3,200 in 2010. While an increase of a mere 690 individuals mightn’t seem like that many, it does represent a 21-percent increase.
"This offers us great hope and shows that we can save species and their habitats when governments, local communities and conservationists work together," says Marco Lambertini, director general of WWF international.
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While there has been a great deal of attention placed on the phenomenon of colony collapse disorder, the bees that are affected by CCD are commercial honeybees, with known populations that have numbers that can be easily quantified. However, the pollination provided by wild bees is also important to the growth cycle of crops, and supplements the job done by commercial honeybees. But as their hives aren’t monitored by beekeepers, a loss in their numbers aren’t as immediately noticed.
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A novel approach for the delivery of natural pesticides has been put forward by a Canadian startup company, making use of the natural pollen-distributing services carried out by regular bees.
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