other environmental news

Arctic sea ice shrank to the smallest area on record this year, US scientists have confirmed. NSIDC said the minimum extent of 4.13 million sq km (1.59 million sq miles) was reached on 16 September.

There are now 41,415 species on the IUCN (The World Conservation Union) Red List and 16,306 of them are threatened with extinction, up from 16,118 last year.

In the July 2 issue of BioScience, researchers and conservation practitioners from 12 organizations presented the Marine Ecoregions of the World (MEOW), adding 232 coastal marine units to the 825 units on land.

In the 19th century, intensive hunting brought the gray whale close to extinction. Although whales in the western Pacific are still endangered, protection efforts in the eastern Pacific seemed to have brought the population there back.

Proposals have been unveiled for the world's largest marine reserve in the Coral Sea, off the coast of Australia, to protect the area from illegal shark fishing and oil and gas prospecting.

A nationwide clean-up of Britain's beaches is under way this weekend amid growing concern over the threat from litter to fish, birds, reptiles and marine mammals.

If you're keeping score on Florida species, take note: Gopher tortoises are now "threatened," and manatees are still "endangered."

Next Thursday, Hugh Edmeades of Christie's auction house will bring down the gavel. When he does, a sinuous shark recently discovered thousands of miles away in Indonesian waters will have a new scientific name.

A whale conservation success story, the recovery of the eastern Pacific gray whale, may not be quite what it seems. Since the end of commercial whaling, numbers rose to about 20,000, thought to be the level they had been at before hunting began.

Despite cod stocks in UK waters being at risk, fishermen are being forced to throw thousands of tonnes back into the sea dead...

For the first time in history, the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species includes ocean corals in its annual report of wildlife going extinct.

Two-thirds of the world's polar bears could disappear by 2050 as global warming continues to melt the Arctic's sea ice, according to a series of

The world’s first walking shark could be named after a global corporation, in an attempt to raise cash for wildlife conservation.

The World Wild Fund for Nature (WWF) launched the Yellow Sea Ecoregion Support Project (YSESP) on Friday to conserve the marine ecosystem.

Two scuba divers have been rescued after being in the sea for more than nine hours off the UK’s Pembrokeshire coast. A search was launched south of Grassholm Island, 11 miles (18km) offshore, after the men failed to resurface on Saturday afternoon.

A seafood industry group is joining together with Australia’s Environment Protection Agency (EPA) and fisheries conservation partners to launch satellite technology on one of Moreton Bay Marine Park's most vulnerable new migrants - a marine turtle.

The northern end of the Bay of Bengal could be at risk of giant earthquakes and tsunamis in the coming decades, an Australian study concludes.

The U.S. navy has some cause to smile now, after a federal court of appeals overturned an earlier stay on its use of high-powered sonar in training exercises off the Southern California coast.

The critically endangered Yangtze River dolphin, or baiji, once lived in China's lower and middle reaches of the Yangtze River, Fuchun River, and in Dongting and Poyang Lakes. Today, it is the world's most endangered cetacean.

WWF , in concert with other conservation organisations, is advocating the immediate establishment of a sanctuary for the imperilled bluefin tuna around the Balearic Islands in the western Mediterranean.