Cuddly Killers

In a report that scaled up local surveys and pilot studies to national dimensions, scientists from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and the Fish and Wildlife Service estimated that domestic cats in the United States — both the pet Fluffies that spend part of the day outdoors and the unnamed strays and ferals that never leave it — kill a median of 2.4 billion birds and 12.3 billion mammals a year, most of them native mammals like shrews, chipmunks and voles rather than introduced pests like the Norway rat.

The estimated kill rates are two to four times higher than mortality figures previously bandied about, and position the domestic cat as one of the single greatest human-linked threats to wildlife in the nation. More birds and mammals die at the mouths of cats, the report said, than from automobile strikes, pesticides and poisons, collisions with skyscrapers and windmills and other so-called anthropogenic causes. Peter Marra of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and an author of the report, said the mortality figures that emerge from the new model “are shockingly high ... When we ran the model, we didn’t know what to expect.” Marra, who performed the analysis with his colleague, Scott R. Loss, and Tom Will of the Fish and Wildlife Service [added] “We were absolutely stunned by the results.” 

New York Times via Jezebel

Jason de Caires Taylor | Underwater Sculpture

Silent Evolution

Unstill Life at installation

Unstill Life after submersion

Underwater Gardener

In 2006, Jason de Caires Taylor founded and created the world's first underwater sculpture park. Situated off the coast of Grenada in the West Indies it is now listed as one of the Top 25 Wonders of the World by National Geographic. His latest creation is MUSA (Museo Subaquatico de Arte), a monumental museum with a collection of over 450 public sculptural works, submerged off the coast of Cancun, Mexico; described by Forbes as one of the world's most unique travel destinations. Both these ambitious, permanent public works have a practical, functional aspect, facilitating positive interactions between people and fragile underwater habitats while at the same relieving pressure on natural resources.

Vicissitudes

Vicissitudes detail

Three-Eyed Fish Caught Near Nuclear Facility

Fishermen in Argentina are claiming that they have caught a three-eyed fish in a reservoir in the Córdoba province, and it just so happens that a nearby nuclear facility pumps its hot water directly into this body of water. Unsurprisingly, the discovery of the three-eyed wolffish has prompted concerns about the levels of radiation in the reservoir and to what degree the local wildlife are affected.

Speaking to local press, fisherman Julián Zmutt said of his discovery: “We were fishing and we got the surprise of getting this rare specimen. As it was dark at that time we did not notice, but then you looked at him with a flashlight and saw that he had a third eye.” Unsurprisingly, they didn’t eat the fish, but instead gave it to local scientists to see if the mutation is natural or caused (as many think) by the nuclear power plant.

Blinky?

inhabitant | io9

Monkey Monday | Muriqui 2016

Source

Rio de Janeiro environmental officials are hoping to make the endangered muriqui the mascot of the 2016 Olympics.

According to the state's environmental ministry, the muriqui or woolly spider monkey is one of several animals native to the state that is at risk of extinction. The monkey is native to the Atlantic rainforest, which covers several Brazilian states, as well as Paraguay, Argentina and Uruguay. Centuries of deforestation and development have seen the rainforest shrink from 1.2 million square kilometres to under 100 thousand square kilometres today.

At the launch of their "Muriqui Rio 2016" campaign, environmentalists displayed merchandise bearing the proposed mascot. Andre Ilha - the protected regions and biodiversity director at Brazil's State Environmental Institute - said the woolly spider monkey makes the ideal mascot for the Olympic Games. "It is a very peaceful animal, so it symbolises that spirit of co-operation associated with the games," he explained. "It's a very agile animal that gets around by swinging in trees. It almost looks like an Olympic athlete."

Read more here.

J. Henry Fair | Industrial Scars

Inside a holding tank at an oil sands upgrader facility | Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada | July 2009

Waste pond near brown coal-fired power station | Lausitz, Germany | 2008

Bauxite waste at an aluminum manufacturing plant | Darrow, LA | December 2005

Herbicide manufacturing plant | Luling, LA | 2010

... Environmental activist J. Henry Fair took these colorful aerial shots of Industrial Scars with the hope that we would understand our role in this mess that we've caused and that, ultimately, we'd want to make a difference.

My Modern Met

Bios Urn

An eco-friendly urn offers people who decide to be cremated the opportunity to give back to Earth with their remains – literally. Designed and created by Spanish designer Martín Ruiz de Azúa, who lives in Barcelona, the Bios Urn allows people to have their ashes eventually grow into a tree.

Arbroath

EDN | Earth Day 2011

The first Earth Day, on April 22, 1970, activated 20 million Americans from all walks of life and is widely credited with launching the modern environmental movement. The passage of the landmark Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act and many other groundbreaking environmental laws soon followed. Growing out of the first Earth Day, Earth Day Network (EDN) works with over 22,000 partners in 192 countries to broaden, diversify and mobilize the environmental movement. More than 1 billion people now participate in Earth Day activities each year, making it the largest civic observance in the world.

All of EDN’s activities, whether greening schools or promoting green economic policies at home and abroad, inform and energize populations so they will act to secure a healthy future for themselves and their children. With its partner organizations, EDN provides civic engagement opportunities at the local, state, national and global levels. At every turn, EDN works to broaden the definition of "environment" to include all issues that affect our health, our communities and our environment, such as greening deteriorated schools, creating green jobs and investment, and promoting activism to stop air and water pollution.

Over the last 40 years, EDN has executed successful environmental campaigns on issues ranging climate change and drinking water to voter registration and saving the whale. EDN is a recognized leader in creating civically–oriented innovative programs with partners outside of the environmental movement to tackle new challenges.

io9 | 25 Great Books By Legendary Scientists

#1. The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin

Alasdair Wilkins writes:

... here are twenty-five amazing books written by world-famous scientists. These are legendary texts, popular science explainers, personal memoirs, and controversial new theories, and they're all enduring monuments to the power of science.

The list includes books by James Watson, Jonas Salk, Richard Feynman, Margaret Mead, Jane Goodall, Richard Dawkins, Mary Leakey, and Primo Levi. The only nits I have to pick are the inclusion of The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud [I would nominate the two-volume Principles of Psychology by William James instead] and the absence of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

Read the article and see the complete list at io9.

Orphaned Baby Bats Saved In Australia

Luke Marsden

Torrential rain has brought chaos to Australia, and not just to the humans who live there. The Australian Bat Clinic and Wildlife Trauma Centre saved 130 orphaned bats on the Gold Coast in past weeks. Carers have visited several bat 'camps' on the coast in recent weeks to find four-week-old babies on the ground covered in maggots and fly eggs.

The surviving youngsters will be bottle fed and kept either hanging on clothes lines or in special intensive care units until they are ready to fly again in about four weeks.

The Presurfer

Biodiversity | The Vancouver Film School

Vimeo via Neatorama

Archinode Studios | Pig Meat Houses, Fab Tree Habs, And Ecotariums

The Pig Meat House

This is an architectural proposal for the fabrication of 3D printed extruded pig cells to form real organic dwellings. It is intended to be a "victimless shelter", because no sentient being was harmed in the laboratory growth of the skin. We used sodium benzoate as a preservative to kill yeasts, bacteria and fungi. Other materials in the model matrix are collagen powder, xanthan gum, mannitol, cochineal, sodium pyrophosphate, and recycled PET plastic scaffold.

The Fab Tree Hab Village

The Fab Tree Hab presents a sophisticated methodology to grow homes from living native trees. This 100% living habitat is prefabricated using Computer Numeric Controlled (CNC) reusable scaffolding, manufactured off-site in advance. These scaffold sections can be readily shipped and assembled to fit local tree and woody plant species. Therefore, we enable dwellings to be a fully integrated part of an ecological community.

The North Pole Ecotarium

The Future North Ecotarium propaganda project is based on the premise that within the next hundred years our climate will be irreversible altered. Massive migrations of urban populations will need to move north to escape severe flooding and increased temperatures.

Much more at Archinode Studio

Via io9

Greenaid | Put SeedBomb Vending Machines In Your Community

Made from a mixture of clay, compost, and seeds, "seedbombs" are becoming an increasingly popular means combating the many forgotten grey spaces we encounter everyday-from sidewalk cracks to vacant lots and parking medians. They can be thrown anonymously into these derelict urban sites to temporarily reclaim and transform them into places worth looking at and caring for. The Greenaid dispensary simply makes these guerilla gardening efforts more accessible to all by appropriating the existing distribution system of the quarter operated candy machine.

The Common Studio via The Daily What

Use Forestle And Save The Rainforest

The name Forestle is deducted from the word "forest". Forestle is a "green Internet search engine". We use our advertising revenue to protect endangered rainforest regions in order to keep our worlds most precious ecosystems intact and fight global warming.
Forestle earns advertising revenue from clicks on "sponsored links". These are text links which are displayed next to the generic search results on the result page of our search engine. The sponsored links at Forestle are delivered by our partner Yahoo.

All of our income (minus about 10% administrative costs) is donated to the adopt an acre program, which is run by The Nature Conservancy – one of the most renowned environmental protection organizations in the world. They use the money, which is generated by Forestle, for the sustainable protection of the most precious rainforests on our planet.

Via The Presurfer

Scientist Describes Declining Snake Populations As "Deeply Troubling"

Out of 17 snake populations monitored over many years in Europe and Africa, 11 populations plummeted about 10 years ago and have not bounced back, says herpetologist Chris Reading of the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology near Oxford, England. Just what caused the declines between 1998 and 2002 is not yet clear, but Reading and nine other biologists sound an alarm in a Biology Letters paper released the week of June 7.

Losing a lot of snakes can upset the way ecosystems work, Reading says. Snakes often rank as top predators, and even ophidiophobes may appreciate the job that snakes do in controlling rats and mice.

The new finding strikes herpetologist Harry Greene of Cornell University as “deeply troubling.” Checking for trends in other populations will be difficult, he says, because snakes are notoriously hard to count. “Being secretive is a very snakey thing.”

No data were included on U.S. snakes, but Greene notes worrisome signs from eastern king snakes in Florida and southern hog-nosed snakes throughout their range. “Of course some snakes seem to be doing fine, but overall the trend is alarming,” Greene says.

Declines of wild creatures have become a recurring theme since Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring warned of pesticides threatening birds. Today, the IUCN estimates that many bird, mammal and amphibian species are threatened with extinction.

Read more at U.S. News