polar bears

The most thorough assessment of land and marine mammals in 12 years, just published in Science, says that a quarter of the world's wild mammal species are at risk of extinction.

It took nearly 2,000 experts in more than 100 countries five years to complete the research. In other words: this one's big, and ought to be paid some serious attention.

While land mammals are most threatened by habitat loss and hunting, marine mammals are more in danger from bycatch, ship strikes and pollution.

And now, a guest post:

Hi All, Leda Huta, Executive Director of Endangered Species Coalition here.

At the Endangered Species Coalition we protect the fish, plants and wildlife on the brink of extinction. Our No Species Left Behind campaign protects species from the bad acts of the Bush administration.

Corruption, abuse of science and a failure of ethics have plagued the Bush administration’s Departments of Interior and Commerce. Both departments are charged with protecting threatened and endangered marine wildlife. Yet politics have overruled science involving even the top levels of the Bush administration. For instance, the Office of Vice President Cheney has on several occasions tried to block protections for wildlife, such as the critically endangered right whale.

A Japanese zoo's efforts to be green turned its polar bears, well, green.

Three bears in the zoo got the eco dye job because of their pond's algae overgrowth, a result of high temperatures in July and August and less-frequent water changes due to the zoo's conservation efforts.

I hate to do this to y'all, but...

BBC has more bad news about Arctic ice loss, just a few days after I wrote about it on Friday.

Seems as though there's about to be another broken record on this front... and I'm going to start sounding like one.

So here's a little something to momentarily cheer you up.

BBC Two has sent a team of scientists and film-makers aboard a Norwegian research vessel exploring the fjords near Svalbard.