Wildlife populations in the world’s tropical regions have fallen by more than 60 percent during the last four decades, according to the latest version of the Living Planet Index. The Index — which tracks populations of 2,688 vertebrate species in tropical and temperate regions worldwide — found that species abundance in the tropics declined by about 44 percent on land, 62 percent in the oceans, and 70 percent in freshwater ecosystems from 1970 to 2008. Cumulatively, species abundance declined by about 1.25 percent annually every year compared with a 1970 baseline, according to the report, which is published by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the Zoological Society of London. Wildlife populations declined by 38 percent in Africa during that period; about 50 percent in Central and South America; and 64 percent in Indo-Pacific regions. Overall, the global index dropped almost 30 percent during the same period. These steep population declines are the result of many factors related to human activities, including deforestation, habitat loss, pollution, overfishing, and climate change.

Wildlife populations in the world’s tropical regions have fallen by more than 60 percent during the last four decades, according to the latest version of the Living Planet Index. The Index — which tracks populations of 2,688 vertebrate species in tropical and temperate regions worldwide — found that species abundance in the tropics declined by about 44 percent on land, 62 percent in the oceans, and 70 percent in freshwater ecosystems from 1970 to 2008. Cumulatively, species abundance declined by about 1.25 percent annually every year compared with a 1970 baseline, according to the report, which is published by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the Zoological Society of London. Wildlife populations declined by 38 percent in Africa during that period; about 50 percent in Central and South America; and 64 percent in Indo-Pacific regions. Overall, the global index dropped almost 30 percent during the same period. These steep population declines are the result of many factors related to human activities, including deforestation, habitat loss, pollution, overfishing, and climate change.

A new study conducted by the University of Buffalo has found that state regulation helped reduce environmental problems associated with unconventional forms of natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania since 2008. In an analysis of 2,988 violations at nearly 4,000 Pennsylvania hydraulic fracturing drill sites, university researchers found that roughly 38 percent (845 violations) were environmental in nature. Among these violations, 25 were classified as “major” — including site restoration failures, contamination of water supplies, land spills, blowouts, and venting and gas migration. As the number of drilling sites increased, the percentage of environmental violations compared to the number of wells drilled dropped from 58.2 percent in 2008 to 30.5 percent in 2010, largely as a result of increased state oversight, the study said. But the total number of environmental incidents tripled from 2008 to 2011 as the number of wells increased. The report’s three lead authors have energy industry ties, but lead author John Martin said the report was funded entirely by the university.

Paul Anastas is credited with coining the term “green chemistry,” the movement to make chemicals and industrial processes more environmentally friendly, and during two stints in Washington, D.C., he has worked to promote those principles at the U.S. Environmental Protection. Anastas, 49, recently left his post as EPA assistant administrator and science advisor to return to teaching at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, he talks about his role in EPA’s decision to approve the use of chemical dispersants after the BP oil spill, why a chemical-by-chemical approach to toxicity testing is not the best model for protecting the environment or human health, and why companies are increasingly applying the concepts of green chemistry to the design of materials and products. “For every one process or product that’s being reinvented using green chemistry and green engineering,” he says, “there may be a hundred or a thousand that have yet to be rethought under these terms.”
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U.S. officials say a record number of fish stocks recovered to healthy population numbers in 2011 while a declining number of species were subject to overfishing. In a reportto Congress, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) declared that six species have been “rebuilt,” including the Bering Sea snow crab, the summer flounder found on the mid-Atlantic coast, the haddock in the Gulf of Maine, the Chinook salmon on the northern California coast, the Coho salmon on the Washington coast, and the Widow rockfish on the Pacific coast. Meanwhile, the number of stocks subject to overfishing decreased by four, and overfished stocks declined by three compared with the 2010 report. Samuel D. Rauch III, a NOAA deputy assistant administrator, said the findings underscore the fact that fisheries management — including sometimes unpopular catch limits — has been effective.

U.S. car makers such as General Motors, Ford, and Nissan are purchasing steel made from pig iron that is smelted using large amounts of illegally logged timber from the Amazon rainforest, according to a two-year investigation by Greenpeace. The environmental group also said that the pig iron smelting, fueled by charcoal produced from tropical forest trees, has resulted in virtual slave labor and illegal logging of indigenous lands in northeastern Brazil. The Greenpeace investigation said that Brazil’s Carajas region — where three-quarters of the forests have been cleared, mainly for charcoal production — is home to 43 blast furnaces used by 18 different companies. Two of the major companies, Viena and Sidepar, sell pig iron to a U.S. steel mill operated by Severstal, Greenpeace said. That mill sells steel to General Motors, Nissan, BMW, and Mercedes, according to Greenpeace. As illegal charcoal operations have decimated the forests in Carajas, loggers have entered conservation areas belonging to indigenous tribes, who have lost 30 percent of their lands to illegal loggers, Greenpeace said.

The volume of greenhouse gases released when a forest is cleared depends on how how the trees are used and in which part of the world the trees are grown, according to a study by researchers at the University of California, Davis. Analyzing how 160 countries use wood from cleared forests, the researchers found that if the wood is generally used to create solid wood products, such as timber for housing, up to 62 percent of the carbon in the trees remains in storage. Temperate forests in the U.S., Canada, and Europe are cleared primarily for use in such products. But the study found that wood from tropical forests in places like Brazil and Indonesia is generally used in paper, pulp, and bioenergy production, and such uses lead to an almost complete release of the carbon stored in trees. Reporting in the journal Nature Climate Change, the researchers said that early studies assumed that most of the carbon stored in trees was released once they were felled. The new study, however, gives a more nuanced picture of carbon releases from deforestation.

A new study finds that the average American would be willing to pay slightly more for clean energy in support of government initiatives to promote low-carbon electricity generation. In a national survey conducted last year, researchers from Yale and Harvard universities found that Americans, on average, would be willing to pay $162 more per year for their electricity bills — an average increase of about 13 percent — as part of a policy requiring 80 percent of energy come from green sources by 2035. However, that willingness varies greatly depending on political affiliation, age, and geographic region, according to the study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. For instance, support was significantly lower among Republicans, independents, and those with no party affiliation — by 25, 13, and 25 percentage points, respectively. Also, according to the analysis, researchers found that the additional cost per household for clean energy would have to fall below $59 per year to pass the current U.S. Senate, and drop below $48 per year to get through the U.S. House of Representatives.

Five nations in southern Africa are joining together to create a huge conservation area that will extend across their borders and expand critical territory for elephants. But can these new protections reverse decades of decline for area wildlife while also benefiting the people who live there? BY CAROLINE FRASER

A new study says that well-managed selective logging may be the only realistic solution to conserving tropical forests in the face of a rapacious global demand for timber resources. In an analysis of more than 100 studies, researchers at the University of Florida found that while even selective logging has a significant impact on biodiversity in tropical forests and carbon storage capacity, those impacts are “survivable and reversible to a degree” if the forests are given time to recover. In fact, the researchers found that, on average, 85 to 100 percent of animal and plant species present before initial logging were still around after selective logging and that forests retained about 75 percent of their carbon after initial harvest. By contrast, the researchers say, forest loss for the planting of rubber or palm oil plantations is permanent. “We’re not advocates for logging,” said Jack Putz, a professor of biology and lead author of the study published in Conservation Letters. “We’re just acknowledging that it is a reality — and that within that reality, there is a way forward.”

A new study says that well-managed selective logging may be the only realistic solution to conserving tropical forests in the face of a rapacious global demand for timber resources. In an analysis of more than 100 studies, researchers at the University of Florida found that while even selective logging has a significant impact on biodiversity in tropical forests and carbon storage capacity, those impacts are “survivable and reversible to a degree” if the forests are given time to recover. In fact, the researchers found that, on average, 85 to 100 percent of animal and plant species present before initial logging were still around after selective logging and that forests retained about 75 percent of their carbon after initial harvest. By contrast, the researchers say, forest loss for the planting of rubber or palm oil plantations is permanent. “We’re not advocates for logging,” said Jack Putz, a professor of biology and lead author of the study published in Conservation Letters. “We’re just acknowledging that it is a reality — and that within that reality, there is a way forward.”

Japanese biologists are racing to develop a type of food that would enable fish farmers to breed eels on a commercial scale using for the first time larvae produced in captivity, a step that could reduce pressures on collapsing eel populations worldwide. While farmers have long bred captive eels — a popular delicacy in many countries — until now they have only been able to do so on a commercial scale using baby eels trapped in the wild, a step that has exacerbated the catastrophic decline in wild eel populations from the Far East to North America. The reason, scientists say, is that it has been difficult and expensive to produce the foodstuff critical to the development of eel larvae: a mixture of marine detritus known as “marine snow.” Scientists so far have considered a wide range of possible ingredients, including the yolk from shark’s eggs. “Whoever gets there first has made a tremendous discovery; you’re recovering a cultural tradition,” David Righton, a scientist with the UK-based Cefas marine laboratory, told the Guardian. “Whoever does this is culturally important as well as becoming very rich.”

U.S. scientists this week unveiled a new online resource that maps the distribution of species worldwide and will ultimately allow users to update or add species data. The so-called “Map of Life” project — which draws on millions of known locations of various species, expert range maps, World Wildlife Fund data, and the databases of individual scientists — allows users to view distribution records for any terrestrial vertebrate species or fish worldwide, and generate a listing of all species within a 50- to 1,000-kilometer range. An updated version of the site, expected later this year, will include data on plants, trees, and selected invertebrate groups. Ultimately, users will be able to flag and edit data, update their own data sets, and provide feedback on the data. The project, which is funded in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation, is described online in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution.

With melting sea ice opening up previously inaccessible parts of the Arctic Ocean, the fishing industry sees a potential bonanza. But some scientists and government officials have begun calling for a moratorium on fishing in the region until the true state of the Arctic fishery is assessed. BY ED STRUZIK

A U.S.-based company that used genetic engineering to develop a technology to convert sugar into biofuel has announced that it will stop producing the fuel, at least temporarily, because the process simply isn’t profitable. Amyris, a San Francisco firm that also produces cosmetic products, had engineered a type of yeast that can eat sugar and secrete an oil similar to diesel. While the company had some success using this process in the production of biofuels, including for use by buses in Brazil, it achieved greater profits selling the chemicals for use in other products, such as moisturizers and fragrances, according to a report by MIT’s Technology Review. According to the report, the average selling price for the company’s products is about $7.70 per liter ($29 per gallon), which is far higher than the cost of petroleum-based diesel. And even the $7.70 price was propped up by the amount the company can earn by producing moisturizers. According to Amyris officials, the company will stop producing biodiesels by mid-year, but the firm remains interested in developing commercial-scale fuel plants in the future.

Warming ocean temperatures have changed the distribution of many critical marine species off the British coast, as warm water fish are increasingly expanding into northern waters and cold-water species are swimming to colder depths, according to a new report. The report of the Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership, published by the UK and Scottish governments, found that warm water species such as the bluefin tuna and thresher sharks are more frequently appearing in the waters off southwest England and squid have become increasingly abundant in the North Sea. One southern species, the bib, has moved north by 212 miles (342 kilometers) in the last two decades, while common North Sea species such as cod and lemon sole are swimming at an average of 5.5 meters deeper per decade. The report, based on an analysis of scientific studies, warns these changes pose potential threats for native species and the commercial fishing industry as changing water temperatures could introduce invasive species and new diseases.

The vast amounts of water pumped out of the ground for irrigation, drinking water, and industrial uses will increasingly contribute to global sea level rise in the coming decades, according to a new study. According to researchers at Utrecht University, humans pumped about 204 cubic kilometers (49 cubic miles) of groundwater in 2000, much of which evaporated into the atmosphere before ultimately entering rivers, canals and, eventually, the world’s oceans. While in earlier decades the rise in sea level caused by groundwater removal was canceled out by the construction of dams, that changed by the 1990s as humans pumped more groundwater and built fewer dams. By 2000, groundwater extraction resulted in a sea level rise of about 0.57 millimeters annually — compared with about 0.035 millimeters in 1990. According to the study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, by 2050 the pumping of groundwater worldwide could cause sea levels to rise about 0.8 millimeters annually.

Eight U.S. and German automakers have agreed on a standardized technology system for electric-vehicle charging, a coordinated approach they say will allow drivers to rapidly re-charge their vehicles at most charging stations regardless of power source. The announcement is an important breakthrough for the electric vehicle industry, introducing a common technology that could foster the spread of a recharging infrastructure at gas stations, malls, office buildings, and other locations — a critical step if consumers are to adopt electric vehicle technology. The integrated single-port system — which will be utilized by Audi, BMW, Chrysler, Daimler, Ford, General Motors, Porsche, and Volkswagen — allows drivers to use numerous charging technologies, including AC- and DC-charging, with one vehicle inlet. The system, which will be unveiled at the Electric Vehicle Symposium 26 in Los Angeles, will reportedly be able to recharge an electric vehicle in 15 to 20 minutes.

A camera trap video in Cameroon has captured nearly two minutes of film of the Cross River gorilla, the rarest of the four sub-species of gorillas and one that is seldom seen in the wild. The footage shows a group of eight gorillas walking through the forest in Cameroon’s Kagwene Gorilla Sanctuary, their feet loudly crunching over the leaves on the forest floor. Suddenly, a silverback gorilla, perhaps sensing the camera trap, bluff-charges past the camera, pounding its chest as it runs. The New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), which helped set up the traps, says it is the best footage ever captured of Cross River gorillas, a sub-species with fewer than 250 individuals remaining. In the footage, one of the gorillas is clearly missing a hand, perhaps the result of it getting caught in a snare. Hunting and habitat destruction in the creatures’ last refuge — the mountainous border region of Cameroon and Nigeria — have whittled away populations of the Cross River gorilla. But the Cameroon government, WCS, and local wardens have launched an improved system of protection that seems to have halted the animals’ decline.

Debris from last year’s tsunami in Japan, including some potentially toxic materials, is increasingly being discovered along the Alaska coastline. Since January, millions of pieces of debris have washed ashore along the Alaska coast, from soccer balls and buoys to motorcycles and large drums containing unknown materials, according to the Marine Conservation Alliance Foundation (MCAF), a Juneau-based group monitoring the debris. In some areas, the group has observed mysterious sludge that apparently had leaked from the containers. “So we’re looking at a potential large-scale environmental problem, and what we’re dealing with now is just the start of it,” Merrick Burden, director of the MCAF, told the Juneau Daily News. Much of the debris that has reached Alaska so far was likely pushed by west-to-east winds, and larger materials, driven by ocean currents, will start to reach the coast next year, officials say. To help state officials better understand the future threats, MCAF is urging mariners, fishing boats, and beachcombers to take photos when they spot debris and report it to their project and the federal government.