Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Discoveries that could help diabetics titled in honour of activist and journalist murdered in Amazon Scientists in Brazil have found two new species of fermenting yeasts and named them after journalist Dom Phillips and activist Bruno Pereira, the two men murdered last year in the Amazon rainforest. The discovery came from four isolates of the Spathaspora species, according to a paper published in the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology. Continue reading...

From elephants to tigers, study reveals scale of damage to wildlife caused by transformation of wildernesses and human activity The total weight of Earth’s wild land mammals – from elephants to bisons and from deer to tigers – is now less than 10% of the combined tonnage of men, women and children living on the planet. A study by scientists at Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science, published this month, concludes that wild land mammals alive today have a total mass of 22m tonnes. By comparison, humanity now weighs in at a total of around 390m tonnes. Continue reading...

Swifts, swallows, bats and geckos all enjoy a ‘coexistence of mutual respect’ on the football stands, wildlife census shows In the silence after the final whistle you can hear the blackbirds sing, or perhaps a chaffinch or a Sardinian warbler. Or, if night has already fallen, you may see the bats swoop low over the centre circle as the fans shuffle towards the exits. This is the Spotify Camp Nou, the home of Barcelona football club … but also of myriad creatures. Barcelona is probably the first major football club in the world to produce a guide to its stadium’s wildlife, after carrying out a census of its animal occupants. The guide is part of the club rethinking its role in the community and its environmental impact, says Jordi Portabella, an environmentalist and former candidate for mayor of the city, now in charge of developing the club’s sustainability policy. Continue reading...

The Wildlife Trusts warn letting dogs loose in nature reserves in spring and summer can cause damage and disturbances to animals and plants From scaring endangered birds on their nests to the mountain of excrement they produce each day, dogs with irresponsible owners are a growing problem in UK nature reserves, say conservationists, who are urging owners to keep their pets on a short lead. The Wildlife Trusts, which operate more than 2,300 nature reserves across the country, say loose dogs are a leading cause of plant and animal disturbances in UK reserves and their waste carries diseases for wildlife, with growing evidence that the 3,000 tonnes of faeces and urine produced by dogs each day disturbs the balance of ecosystems at levels that would be illegal on farmland. Continue reading...