Portal:Environment

The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef system, composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching for over 2,300 kilometres (1,400 mi) over an area of approximately 344,400 square kilometres (133,000 mi²). The reef is located in the Coral Sea, off the coast of Queensland, Australia, separated from the coast by a channel 160 kilometres (100 mi) wide in places and over 61 metres (200 ft) deep. The Great Barrier Reef can be seen from outer space and is the world's biggest single structure made by living organisms. This reef structure is composed of and built by billions of tiny organisms, known as coral polyps. It supports a wide diversity of life and was selected as a World Heritage Site in 1981. CNN labelled it one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World in 1997. Australian World Heritage places included it in its list in 2007. The Queensland National Trust named it a state icon of Queensland in 2006.

A large part of the reef is protected by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, which helps to limit the impact of human use, such as fishing and tourism. Other environmental pressures on the reef and its ecosystem include runoff of humanmade pollutants, climate change accompanied by mass coral bleaching, dumping of dredging sludge and cyclic population outbreaks of the crown-of-thorns starfish. According to a study published in October 2012 by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the reef has lost more than half its coral cover since 1985, a finding reaffirmed by a 2020 study which found over half of the reef's coral cover to have been lost between 1995 and 2017, with the effects of a widespread 2020 bleaching event not yet quantified. (Full article...)

• ... that Kirkus Reviews called Jenny Price's environmentalist book Stop Saving the Planet! a "fun introduction to a serious topic"?
• ... that in 2023, footballer Funso Ojo was named as Port Vale's PFA community player of the year for his efforts at becoming more environmentally friendly?
• ... that German social media personality Maya Leinenbach became vegan after completing a school project on the influence of nutrition and consumption on the environment?
• ... that environmental destruction can be a means of genocide?
• ... that Flathead Lake Biological Station can detect invasive aquatic species in real-time using eDNA technology?
• ... that in a 2014 study viriditoxin was able to inhibit prostate cancer cells' growth in a lab environment?
• ... that the UN Human Rights Committee recognized a correlation between the right to life and protection of the environment in Portillo Cáceres v Paraguay?
• ... that environmental economist V. Kerry Smith has been described as a "Renaissance Man of Economics"?

The passenger pigeon was a species of pigeon that was once the most common bird in North America. It is estimated that there were as many as five billion passenger pigeons in the United States at the time Europeans colonized North America. They lived in enormous flocks, and during migration, one could see flocks of them a mile (1.6 km) wide and 300 miles (500 km) long, taking several days to pass and probably containing two billion birds. The species had not been common in the Pre-Columbian period, until the devastation of the American Indian population by European diseases.

Over the 19th century, the species went from being one of the most abundant birds in the world to extinction. At the time, passenger pigeons had one of the largest groups or flocks of any animal, second to only the desert locust.

Some decimation in numbers occurred as a result of loss of habitat, when the Europeans started settling further inland. However, the primary factor emerged when pigeon meat was commercialized as a cheap food for slaves and the poor in the 19th century, resulting in hunting on a massive scale. There was a slow decline in their numbers between about 1800 and 1870, followed by a catastrophic decline between 1870 and 1890, at the end of which they were rare and beyond the point of recovery. 'Martha', thought to be the world's last passenger pigeon, died on September 1, 1914 in Cincinnati.

• • April 21: European Union to reduce carbon emissions by 55% of 1990 levels by 2030
  • November 27: Wikinews interviews Craig Farquharson, Liberal Democrat candidate for 2020 Groom by-election
  • November 26: Wikinews interviews Sandra Jephcott, Sustainable Australia candidate for 2020 Groom by-election
  • December 12: Greta Thunberg named 2019 Time Person of the Year

Rachel Louise Carson (May 27, 1907 – April 14, 1964) was an American marine biologist, writer, and conservationist whose sea trilogy (1941–1955) and book Silent Spring (1962) are credited with advancing marine conservation and the global environmental movement.

Carson began her career as an aquatic biologist in the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, and became a full-time nature writer in the 1950s. Her widely praised 1951 bestseller The Sea Around Us won her a U.S. National Book Award, recognition as a gifted writer, and financial security. Its success prompted the republication of her first book, Under the Sea Wind (1941), in 1952, which was followed by The Edge of the Sea in 1955 — both were also bestsellers. This sea trilogy explores the whole of ocean life from the shores to the depths. (Full article...)

The Global Carbon Project (GCP) is an organisation that seeks to quantify global greenhouse gas emissions and their causes. Established in 2001, its projects include global budgets for three dominant greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄), and nitrous oxide (N₂O)—and complementary efforts in urban, regional, cumulative, and negative emissions.

The main object of the group has been to fully understand the carbon cycle. The project has brought together emissions experts, earth scientists, and economists to tackle the problem of rising concentrations of greenhouse gases. In 2020, the project released its newest Global Methane Budget and first Global Nitrous Oxide Budget, the two anthropogenic trace gases most dominant for warming after carbon dioxide. (Full article...)