Showing posts with label Species Extinction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Species Extinction. Show all posts

Monday, December 14, 2015

Over 15,000 baby sea lions estimated dead as Pacific sea life dies off



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Sea lions


(NaturalNews) The Marine Mammal Center rescued over a hundred sea lions in a 10-day period off the West Coast of California in the winter of 2015. The influx of stranded sea lions is a sign that the health of the ocean is deteriorating. From January 1 to February 12, 2015, National Geographic counted nearly 500 rescued sea lions, an amount that is alarming scientists. Something has gone awry in the West Coast waters.

The sea lions are not finding food, they are losing strength, and many are starting to wash ashore. The startling trend didn't start in 2015. The number of stranded sea lions began rising in the winter of 2013, when scientists started noticing waves of sea lion pups washing ashore. Scientists believe the ocean's temperatures have shifted. Warmer currents may be affecting food sources that the sea lions depend on. Others see problems in ocean water acidity. The animals are being forced to go on longer quests to find food. Many of the pups are being left behind, stranded, while their parents search for food.

One-third of sea lions born last summer wiped out

 

The death of this sentinel species is an indication of changes in ocean climate and ecosystem. Sea lion prey, which include sardines and crayfish, are reportedly disappearing in numbers as well, forcing the starving sea lions to go on longer quests in search of food. Scientists are concerned about ocean pH and rising acidity of the waters. According to San Jose Mercury News, marine biologists warn that, if the trend continues, an entire generation of California sea lions could be wiped out.
When speaking to NBC News, Sea World San Diego senior veterinarian Hendrick Nollens reported, "We had rescued 19 California sea lions in January [2013]. This year we already rescued 87 pups in that same month. So this event seems to be much larger."

According to the Daily Breeze, the "unusual mortality event" wiped out two-thirds of the sea lion pup population off the West Coast in 2013.

Rehabilitation centers are taking several hundred pups in this year to save the species from total extinction.

NOAA wildlife biologist Sharon Melin confirmed that most pups captured in the wild in 2013 were only half their weight. After they are released back into the wild, they are expected to maintain their weight. When Melin went on a research trip in September 2013, she reported that the weight of the pups was still low. She brought back the bad news: "We've told the centers to prepare for the worst."
The U-T San Diego concurred, reporting that pups in the Channel Island rookeries continued to struggle despite rehabilitation efforts. On average, pups were 19% below their average weight, even after rehabilitation.

Jim Milbury of NOAA Fisheries says that West Coast sea lions have a birth rate of about 50,000 a year, and San Diego 6 reported on Jan. 28, 2015, that nearly 1 of 3 pups born the previous summer have already died.

If 33% of pups born in 2014 have already died, then based on the average birth rate, over 15,000 have passed away in that short time frame. 

Ocean water acidity on the rise, subjecting aquatic life to disease

 

According to Jennifer Palma of Global News, ocean health is deteriorating, indicated by a die off of scallops and oysters. "Getting pacific oysters and scallops is next to impossible; the industry is in crisis. ... So what's killing the Pacific oysters and scallops? A possible combination of factors including warmer oceans, decreasing acidity levels and potentially disease," she said in a report.
University of British Columbia marine microbiology professor Curtis Suttle is concerned about changes in the pH of ocean waters. "The hypothesis -- there's a working hypothesis --w is that these changes, these excursions in pH, are making the shellfish vulnerable to infection by diseases that they would normally be resistant to."


Sources for this article include:


http://enenews.com
http://enenews.com
http://enenews.com
http://www.dailybreeze.com

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Monday, November 9, 2015

The impending anthropogenic mass extinction could very well make the elite depopulation agenda a moot point according to Rosemary Mason.


Global Research

Poisoned Agriculture: Depopulation and Human Extinction


Agricultural-Engineer-On-Field-Examining-Ripe-Ears-Of-Grain-GMO-Test-Crop


There is a global depopulation agenda. The plan is to remove the ‘undesirables’, ‘the poor’ and others deemed to be ‘unworthy’ and a drain on finite resources. However, according to Rosemary Mason, the plan isn’t going to work because an anthropogenic mass extinction is already underway that will affect all life on the planet and both rich and poor alike. Humans will struggle to survive the phenomenon.


A new paper by Rosemary A Mason in the ‘Journal of Biological Physics and Chemistry’, indicates that a ‘sixth extinction’ is under way (the Holocene extinction, sometimes called the Sixth Extinction, is a name describing the ongoing extinction of species during the present Holocene epoch - since around 10,000 BCE). In her paper, ‘The sixth mass extinction and chemicals in the environment: our environmental deficit is now beyond nature’s ability to regenerate’, she argues that loss of biodiversity is the most urgent of the environmental problems, as biodiversity is critical to ecosystem services and human health. And the main culprit is the modern chemical-intensive industrialised system of food and agriculture.

Mason asserts there is a growing threat from the release of hormone-disrupting chemicals that could even be shifting the human sex ratio and reducing sperm counts. An industrial agricultural revolution has created a technology-dependent global food system, but it has also created serious long-run vulnerabilities, especially in its dependence on stable climates, crop monocultures and industrially produced chemical inputs. In effect, farming is a principal source of global toxification and soil degradation.

Without significant pressure from the public demanding action, Mason argues there could little chance of changing course fast enough to forestall disaster. The ‘free’ market is driving the impending disaster and blind faith in corporate-backed technology will not save us. Indeed, such faith in this technology is actually killing us.

Since the late 1990s, US scientists have written in increasingly desperate tones regarding an unprecedented number of fungal and fungal-like diseases, which have recently caused some of the most severe die-offs and extinctions ever witnessed in wild species and which are jeopardizing food security. Only one paper dared to mention pesticides as being a primary cause, however.
Mason cites a good deal of evidence to show how the widespread use on agricultural crops of the systemic neonicotinoid insecticides and the herbicide glyphosate, both of which cause immune suppression, make species vulnerable to emerging infectious pathogens, driving large-scale wildlife extinctions, including essential pollinators.

Providing evidence to show how human disease patterns correlate remarkably well with the rate of glyphosate usage on corn, soy and wheat crops, which has increased due to ‘Roundup Ready’ crops, Mason goes on to present more sources to show how our over-reliance on chemicals in agriculture is causing irreparable harm to all beings on this planet. Most of these chemicals are known to cause illness, and they have likely been causing illnesses for many years. But until recently, the herbicides have never been sprayed directly on food crops and never in this massive quantity.

The depopulation agenda

Mason discusses how agriculture and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) fit into a wider agenda for depopulating the planet. She notes that on the initiative of Gates, in May 2009 some of the richest people in the US met at the home of Nurse, a British Nobel prize-winning biochemist and President (2003–10) of Rockefeller University in Manhattan, to discuss ways of tackling a ‘disastrous’ environmental, social and industrial threat of overpopulation. The meeting was hosted by David Rockefeller Jr. These same individuals have met several times since to develop a strategy in which population growth would be tackled.

The Rockefeller Foundation (RF) was involved in extensive financing of eugenics research  in league with some of the US’s most respected scientists from such prestigious universities as Stanford, Yale, Harvard and Princeton. The explicit aim of the eugenics lobby funded by wealthy élite families, such as Rockefeller, Carnegie, Harriman and others since the 1920s, has embodied what they termed ‘negative eugenics’, the systematic killing off of ‘undesired bloodlines’.

RF funded the earliest research on GMOs, which Mason regards as part of the depopulation agenda. The RF funded the earliest research on GMOs in the 1940s and effectively founded the science of molecular biology.

Mason cites Steven Druker to show the fraud behind GMOs and how governments and leading scientific institutions have systematically misrepresented the facts about GMOs and the scientific research that casts doubt on their safety. Druker has shown that GMOs can have severe health impacts, which have been covered up.

The Royal Society is the preeminent scientific body within the UK that advises the government. It has misrepresented the facts about GMOs and has engaged in various highly dubious and deceptive tactics to promote the technology.

Druker wrote an open letter to RS as it has an obligation to the British public to provide a public response and ‘put the record straight’ on GMOs. Although Sir Paul Nurse’s presidency of Rockefeller University terminated in 2010, after he assumed the Royal Society presidency, Mason notes that Nurse is said to have maintained a laboratory on the Rockefeller campus and has an ongoing relationship with the university.

She asks: is that why Sir Paul was unable (or unwilling) even to discuss GMOs with Steven Druker? Was he sent to London by the Rockefeller Foundation to support the UK Government in their attempt to bring in GM crops? The UK Government and the GM industry have after all been shown to be working together to promote GM crops and foods, undermine consumer choice and ignore environmental harm.

Mason then goes on to discuss the impact of glyphosate residues (herbicide-tolerant GM crops are designed to work with glyphosate), which are found in the organs of animals, human urine and human breast milk as well as in the air and rivers. She documents its widespread use and contamination of soil and water and notes that the WHO International Agency for Research on Cancer’s assessment of glyphosate being a 2A carcinogen (probably carcinogenic in humans) is unwelcome news for the agrochemical industry. She also notes that Roundup usage has led to a depletion of biodiversity and that loss of biodiversity is also correlated with neonicotinoids. However, despite the evidence, the blatant disregard concerning the use of these substances by regulatory agencies around the world is apparent.

To provide some insight into the impact on health of the chemical-intensive model of agriculture, Mason shows that in the US increases in Alzheimer’s disease, obesity, breast cancer, oesophageal cancer, congenital anomalies and a growing burden of disability, particularly from mental disorders are all acknowledged.

She claims that plans are under way to depopulate the planet’s seven million plus people to a more manageable level of between 500–2000 million by a combination of means, including the poisoning and contamination of the planet’s food and water supplies via chemical-intensive industrialised agriculture. Mason also notes that health-damaging GMOs are being made available to the masses (under the guise of ‘feeding the poor’), while elites are more prone to eat organic food.
We may be gone before planned depopulation takes hold

Although Mason cites evidence to show that a section of the US elite has a depopulation agenda, given the amount of poisons being pumped into the environment and into humans, the thrust of her argument is that we could all be extinct before this comes to fruition – both rich and poor alike.
In concluding, she states that the global pesticides industry has been allowed to dominate the regulatory agencies and have created chemicals of mass destruction that can no longer be controlled. She has some faith in systems biology coming to the fore and being able to understand the complexity of the whole organism as a system, rather than just studying its parts in a reductionist manner. But Mason believes that ultimately the public must place pressure on governments and hold agribusiness to account.

However, that in itself may not be enough.

It is correct to highlight the poisonous impacts of the Rockefeller-sponsored petrochemical ‘green revolution’. It has uprooted indigenous/traditional agriculture and local economies and has recast them in a model that suits global agribusiness. It is poisoning life and the environment, threatening food security across the globe and is unsustainable. The ‘green revolution’ was ultimately a tool of US foreign policy that has been used in conjunction with various institutions like the IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organisation. GMOs represent more of the same.

In this respect, Mason follows the line of argument in William F Engdahl’s book ‘Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation’, which locates the GM issue and the ‘green revolution’ firmly within the context of empire. Engdahl also sees the Rockefeller-Gates hand behind the great GMO project to a sinister eugenicist strategy of depopulation.

Mason’s concerns about depopulation therefore should not be dismissed, particularly given the record of the likes of the Gates and Rockefeller clans, the various covert sterility programmes that have been instituted by the US over the decades and the way agriculture has and continues to be used as a geopolitical tool to further the agendas of rich interests in the US.

To understand the processes that have led to modern farming and the role of entities like Monsanto, we must appreciate the geopolitics of food and agriculture, which benefits an increasingly integrated global cartel of finance, oil, military and agribusiness concerns. This cartel seeks to gain from war, debt bondage and the control of resources, regardless of any notions relating to food security, good health and nutrition, biodiversity, food democracy, etc.
Food and trade policy analyst Devinder Sharma notes the impacts in India:
“India is on fast track to bring agriculture under corporate control… Amending the existing laws on land acquisition, water resources, seed, fertilizer, pesticides and food processing, the government is in overdrive to usher in contract farming and encourage organized retail. This is exactly as per the advice of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund as well as the international financial institutes.”
In Punjab, India, pesticides have turned the state into a ‘cancer epicentre‘. Moreover, Indian soils are being depleted as a result of the application of ‘green revolution’ ideology and chemical inputs. India is losing 5,334 million tonnes of soil every year due to soil erosion because of the indiscreet and excessive use of fertilisers, insecticides and pesticides. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research reports that soil is become deficient in nutrients and fertility.

And now, there is an attempt to push GM food crops into India in a secretive, non-transparent manner that smacks of regulatory delinquency underpinned by corrupt practices, which suggests officials are working hand in glove with US agribusiness.

As smallholders the world over are being driven from their land and the GMO/chemical-industrial farming model takes over, the problems continue to mount.

The environment, the quality of our food and our health are being sacrificed on the altar of corporate profit and a type of looting based on something we can loosely regard as ‘capitalism’. The solution involves a shift to organic farming and investment in and reaffirmation of indigenous models of agriculture. But ultimately it entails what Daniel Maingi of Growth Partners for Africa says what we must do: “… take capitalism and business out of farming.”

It must also entail, according to Maingi, investing in  “… indigenous knowledge and agroecology, education and infrastructure and stand(ing) in solidarity with the food sovereignty movement.”
In other words, both farmers and consumers must organise to challenge governments, corrupt regulatory bodies and big agribusiness at every available opportunity. If we don’t do this, what Mason outlines may come to pass.


Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Researchers : "the [destructive] changes in bird habitats and behavior between now and 2070 will equal the evolutionary and adaptive shifts that normally occur over tens of thousands of years."

 

 



SF Gate

The silence of the birds: When nature gets quiet, be very afraid



three_dead.jpg
Image 2 of 9 | The silence of the birds: Be afraid
Researchers say "the [destructive] changes in bird habitats and behavior between now and 2070 will equal the evolutionary and adaptive shifts that normally occur over tens of thousands of years." Yay humans!
Brutal wildfire images too much to bear? Fatigued by non-stop news of extreme weather, record-low snowpack, emaciated polar bears, unprecedented this and fast-receding that, a natural world that appears to be going more or less insane?
Maybe you need some quiet. Get outside, sit yourself down and let nature’s innate healing powers soothe your aching heart.
Sounds good, right? Sounds refreshing. Sounds… well, not quite right at all. Not anymore.
Have you heard? Or more accurately, not heard? Vicious fires and vanishing ice floes aside, there’s yet another ominous sign that all is not well with the natural world: it’s getting quiet out there. Too quiet.
Behold, this bit over in Outside magazine, profiling the sweet, touching life and times of 77-year-old bioacoustician and soundscape artist Bernie Kraus, author of “The Great Animal Orchestra” (2012), TED talker, ballet scorer, and a “pioneer in the field of soundscape ecology.”
Krause, last written about on SFGate back in 2007, is a man whose passion and profession has been making field recordings of the world’s “biophony” for going on 45 years, setting up his sensitive equipment in roughly the same places around the world to record nature’s (normally) stunningly diverse aural symphony – all the birds, bees, beavers, wolves, babbling streams, fluttering wings, the brush of trees and the rush of rivers – truly, the very pulse and thrum of life itself.

Read More Here

Thursday, February 6, 2014

Woolly mammoths, rhinos and other ice age beasts may have munched on high-protein wildflowers called forbs, new research suggests.

LiveScience

Woolly Mammoths and Rhinos Ate Flowers


arctic
The Arctic had much more diverse flora than previously thought during the Pleistocene Era
Credit: Mauricio Anton
Woolly mammoths, rhinos and other ice age beasts may have munched on high-protein wildflowers called forbs, new research suggests.
And far from living in a monotonous grassland, the mega-beasts inhabited a colorful Arctic landscape filled with flowering plants and diverse vegetation, the study researchers found.
The new research "paints a different picture of the Arctic," thousands of years ago, said study co-author Joseph Craine, an ecosystem ecologist at Kansas State University. "It makes us rethink how the vegetation looked and how those animals thrived on the landscape."

The ancient ecosystem was detailed today (Feb. 5) in the journal Nature.
Pretty landscape
In the past, scientists imagined that the now-vast Arctic tundra was once a brown grassland steppe that teemed with wooly mammoths, rhinos and bison. But recreations of the ancient Arctic vegetation relied on fossilized pollen found in permafrost, or frozen soil. Because grasses and sedges tend to produce more pollen than other plants, those analyses produced a biased picture of the landscape. [Image Gallery: Ancient Beasts Roam an Arctic Landscape]
To understand the ancient landscape better, researchers analyzed the plant genetic material found in 242 samples of permafrost from across Siberia, Northern Europe and Alaska that dated as far back as 50,000 years ago.

Read More Here
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Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Obdurodon tharalkooschild: Fossil of Giant, Toothed Platypus Discovered


Nov 5, 2013 by Sci-News.com

An Australian-U.S. team of paleontologists has found a unique fossil of a huge, carnivorous platypus that lived in what is now Australia during the late Miocene.

This is an artist's reconstruction of Obdurodon tharalkooschild. The inset shows its first lower molar. Image credit: Peter Schouten.
This is an artist’s reconstruction of Obdurodon tharalkooschild. The inset shows its first lower molar. Image credit: Peter Schouten.
The modern platypus is a duck-billed, venomous, semi-aquatic mammal with webbed feet and is covered in short waterproof fur. It is one of the five extant species of monotremes, the only mammals that lay eggs instead of giving birth.
The new extinct species of platypus, named Obdurodon tharalkooschild, has been described from a unique tooth fossil found at the famous Riversleigh World Heritage Area of Queensland.
The specific name, tharalkooschild, honors an Indigenous Australian creation story about the origin of the platypus.
Unlike the living species, Obdurodon tharalkooschild had fully functional teeth that may have been used to kill and consume a wide range of animals that lived alongside it in ancient pools and lakes. Based on the size of its tooth, it is estimated that Obdurodon tharalkooschild would have been twice the size of the modern platypus, around 3.3 feet (1 m) long.
“Like other platypuses, it was probably a mostly aquatic mammal, and would have lived in and around the freshwater pools in the forests that covered the Riversleigh area millions of years ago,” explained Prof Suzanne Hand from the University of New South Wales, a co-author of the article published in the Journal of Vertebrate Palaeontology.
Read More Here
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Monday, June 24, 2013

State investigating death of 25,000 bumblebees







by KGW reporter Erica Heartquist
Bio | Email | Follow: @EricaHeartquist
Posted on June 19, 2013 at 5:53 PM
Updated Thursday, Jun 20 at 5:33 AM

WILSONVILLE -- It's a mystery that has prompted an investigation by the State of Oregon. Thousands of dead bumblebees are blanketing a parking lot in Wilsonville.
The plaza, just off Interstate 5 that houses Costco, Target, a Sprint store and Panda Express to name a few, has about 65 European Linden trees.
Since the weekend, dead bumblebees have been falling from the trees. Experts estimate there have been more than 25,000 dead bees. On Sunday, the bees started falling from the trees until  shoppers reported them to the various stores.
"They were just evenly spread out over the entire parking lot," said Mace Vaughan, Pollinator Conservation Program Director with the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation.
Monday, the calls flooded The Xerces Society, a nonprofit organization that protects wildlife through the conservation of invertebrates and their habitat.
"(The were) just telling us that there seemed to be an incredible, awful bumblebee die-off and could we get out here to look and see what was going on," said Vaughan.
Wednesday, KGW found even more dead or dying bees falling from the trees.



Read More  Here