BIODIVERSITY AND HUMAN HEALTH ISSUES IN THE NEWS

General Topic Categories

• Direct threats to biodiversity
• Value of Biodiversity: new research and developments
• Human health impacts of environmental degradation and biodiversity loss
• Emerging and Re-emerging Infectious Diseases influenced by biodiversity loss or habitat degradation
• Global climate change
• Alien Invasions

Threats to Biodiversity

• Brazil recovers $25 million of illegally cut mahogany. February 21, 2002. Reuters. Brazil's environmental agency, Ibama, has seized 220,000 square feet of "poached" mahogany and is floating the wood down the rivers of the Amazon jungle as part of its biggest ever operation to stop illegal loggers.
• Sea turtles under siege from egg poachers, pollution, and human development. December 07, 2001. AP.
• Development threatens California wildlife habitat. Aug 20, 2001. Almost 60 percent of the secret trails used by California's wildlife to travel between healthy habitat patches are threatened by development. The loss of these corridors threatens not only the future health but the very existence of the state's most charismatic animal species, according to a recent report issued by 160 biologists.
• Sharks need protection from overzealous fishermen. Aug 9, 2001. It's the "summer of the shark," with attacks against swimmers in the United States and the Caribbean making gruesome headlines. Peter Benchley, the best-selling author whose novel Jaws made a whole generation afraid to go into the water, is now campaigning in defense of the sharks he helped to make infamous.
  
• Japanese whaling expedition kills 158 whales. Aug. 8, 2001. Japanese ships returned from an expedition in the northwest Pacific with a quarry of 158 whales, 70 more than last year's hunt. They added Bryde's and sperm whales to the usual catch of Minke, the government said this week.
• Climate change a new threat for the most endangered seal in the world. July 25, 2001. World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). global warming poses a new threat to the ringed seals of Lake Saimaa, in Finland, which with only 250 individuals left in the wild, is the most endangered seal species in the world. Saimaa ringed seals normally give birth to their cubs in a den built of snow. The den protects the animals against cold weather and predators.
  
• Climate change threatens blue whales' food supply. July 19, 2001. Reuters. Melting polar ice is threatening the main food source for Antarctic blue whales and could lead to their extinction, an international environmental group said Thursday. The whales feed on small sea creatures known as krill, which in turn eat microscopic marine algae. The algae live in sea ice and are released in the summer when the ice melts.
  

Biodiversity Value News Stories

• Wormwood is the basis for a cancer-fighting pill. November 28, 2001. ENN.
• Cloning of metal-eating plants could clean up contamination. Aug 14, 2001. ENN. A wild mustard plant that grows only in the Austrian Alps naturally accumulates large amounts of metals in its tissues. This tiny plant may be the key to cleaning up large areas contaminated by heavy metals from industrial production.
• New vaccine against Leishmaniasis developed from pest insect's saliva. Aug. 7, 2001. A vaccine developed from sand fly saliva has proven effective when tested in mice against a deadly tropical illness that affects millions of people in the developing world, researchers said Monday.
• Seattle adopts Kyoto limits, scolds Bush. July 24, 2001. Reuters.
• Most mammal species found in Peruvian Amazon. July 3, 2001. A remote area of rainforest in northeastern Peru defined by three large rivers appears to harbor more species of mammals than anywhere else on Earth. The mammal counts were published in two separate studies from different universities released at nearly the same time this week.

Environmental Impacts on Human Health

• Kids lungs stunted by air pollution. December 18, 2001. ENN.
• Investigators probe risk of toxics to human reproduction. Aug 21, 2001. ENN. Human reproduction, fetal and child development are vulnerable to chemicals in the environment and other environmental factors. New knowledge about the human genome is providing clues to how genes and the environment interact to cause developmental defects.
• World water crisis will threaten one in three. Aug 13, 2001. Reuters. A looming water crisis could threaten one in three people by 2025, sparking as much conflict this century as oil did in the last, the U.N.-sponsored Third World Water Forum said in a statement Monday.
• Pollution threatens community health in Nigeria. Aug 7, 2001. Reuters. Unless the Nigerian government takes appropriate measures, communities in Nigeria's southern state of Ondo will suffer outbreaks of water-borne diseases due to the contamination of their fresh water sources by oil exploration activities.
• Premature births in the 1960s linked to DDT. July 20, 2001. Environmental News Network. The use of the pesticide DDT across the United States has been linked to premature births in the 1960s in a study conducted by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and other federal health agencies and published in the medical journal Lancet. DDT is no longer produced in the United States the researchers are still worried about the effects of the pesticide in those 25 countries where it is still used, largely to control the mosquitoes that carry malaria.
  

Emerging and Re-emerging Infectious Diseases

• West Nile virus detected in Canadian birds. Aug 21, 2001. Reuters. The potentially deadly West Nile virus has been detected in early tests of two dead birds found in the province of Ontario, which could mark the first time the virus has made its way into Canada.
• More Than Just a Nuisance, the Mosquito Is a Virtuoso of Disease. Aug 7, 2001. New York Times. For millions of people, including thousands in this country each year, the mosquito is far more than a pest. For them this insect — a quarter-inch long and weighing a tiny fraction of an ounce — carries serious disease and sometimes death.
• West Nile virus strikes Florida horses. July 24, 2001. ENN. The first equine case of West Nile virus (WNV) in the United States this year has been confirmed in a Florida horse by the National Veterinary Services Laboratories in Ames, Iowa. The positive horse was located in Jefferson County, Florida.

Global Climate Change in the News

• Limiting Greenhouse Gases in India and China. Aug. 7, 2001. A series of studies conducted by Daniel Sperling, PhD, of the Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS) at the University of California at Davis is pinpointing inexpensive ways to curb heat-trapping emissions from the transportation sector in developing countries.
• Kyoto could save U.S. billions in energy costs. July 13, 2001. Ratification of the Kyoto climate change treaty could save U.S. consumers $50 billion a year on gasoline and electricity bills.
• Researchers forecast rapid, irreversible climate warming. July 24, 2001. Environmental News Network. As early as the year 2030, the planet is likely to heat up between one and two degrees.
• Scientists say future climate change could be sudden. July 13, 2001. Future changes in the earth's climate may happen suddenly, triggered by man-made factors such as smokestacks and exhaust pipes.
• Warming Threat Requires Action Now, Scientists Say. July 12, 2001. Global temperatures have risen 1 degree Fahrenheit in the last 50 years; since the last Ice Age, they have risen about 9 degrees.

Alien Invasions

• Zebra mussels continue to be a problem. Aug 22, 2001. ENN. It took less than 10 years. Nonnative zebra mussels from Europe first appeared in the Mississippi River in 1991, and today the exploding zebra mussel population has carpeted some parts of the Mississippi River bed with 10,000 to 20,000 mussels per square yard.
• Study shows perils of importing nonnative species. Aug 17, 2001. Reuters. Documenting the ecological perils of introducing nonnative species to control pests, researchers said this week that parasitic wasps brought to Hawaii as part of sugar cane farming had become the dominant players in a native ecosystem.