Racing Toward Total Extinction

An increase of acidity in the Pacific Ocean is quickly killing off one of the world’s most beloved shellfish, the scallop, according to a report by the British Columbia Shellfish Grower’s Association.

A recent study warned that ocean acidification is accelerating at a rate unparalleled in the life of the oceans-perhaps the fastest rate in the planet’s existence-which is degrading marine ecosystems on a mass scale. (Link).

Moose in Minnesota are dying at an alarming rate, and biologists are perplexed as to why.

In the 1980s, moose numbered about 4,000 in the northwest part of the state; today, there are about 100. In Northeast Minnesota, the population has dropped by half since 2006, to 4,300 from more than 8,800. In 2012, the decline was steep enough – 35 percent – that the state and local Chippewa tribes, which rely on moose meat for subsistence, called off the moose hunt. The mortality rate rebounded slightly this year, but moose continue to die at twice the normal rate to sustain a population. Researchers elsewhere, along the southern edge of moose territory in New Hampshire and Montana, are also beginning to notice declines in the animals’ numbers (Link).

Sea life in the Pacific Ocean is dying off at an alarming rate, and the peak of all this death and destruction coincides with a certain nuclear disaster that ironically occurred on the Pacific coast of Japan. Still, scientists analyzing what’s referred to as ‘sea snot’ point their finger at global warming, refusing to even mention the radiation from Fukushima. Normally, this snot covers about 1 percent of the floor. Now, it seems to be covering about 98 percent of it. (Link).

About 28,000 rivers have disappeared from China’s state maps, an absence seized upon by environmentalists as evidence of the irreversible natural cost of developmental excesses.

Only 22,909 rivers, covering an area of 100 square kilometres were located by surveyors, compared with the more than 50,000 present in the 1990s, a three-year study by the Ministry of Water Resources and the National Bureau of Statistics found. (Link).

Association of Fishermen in Ukraine has sounded the alarm as 70 types of domestic fish are on the verge of extinction. Experts under ‘News of Ukraine magazine’ Market Leader found out the reasons that jeopardize fish populations.

According to Alexander Chistyakov, the chairman of the Association of Fishermen of Ukraine, local water bodies are hotbeds for large number of diseases … In addition, Alexander Chistyakov said that there was a catastrophic decline in domestic flocks of native fish. (Link).

The world’s largest tropical desert, the Sahara, has suffered a catastrophic collapse of its wildlife populations, according to a new study led by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Zoological Society of London. They assessed 14 desert species, finding that half of those are regionally extinct or confined to one percent or less of their historical range.

The only species that still inhabits most of its historical range is the Nubian ibex, but even this species is classified as vulnerable due to numerous threats including widespread hunting. (Link).

(Translated) In the Mediterranean, 17,000 marine species coexist with 300 million tonnes of waste. This was discovered by European scientists. The situation is the same in other seas and oceans. This is not only a threat to marine life, but also for the man – with seafood absorbs non-degradable waste.

Recently, a whale died off the coast of Portugal. Her stomach contained 17kg of plastic. This was enough to kill her. (Link).

A Vancouver Aquarium whale researcher is sounding the alarm over what he calls ‘puzzling’ changes observed in the resident killer whale pods that live off the northern coast of B.C. and Alaska.

Barrett-Lennard says one resident pod has lost seven matriarchs over the past two years, an unusually high death rate, and he’s also noticed a lack of vocalizations from the normally chatty mammals. Resident killer whales are typically very vocal in the summer but, for the second year in a row, they have been remarkably quiet, says Barrett-Lennard. So quiet that we often had difficulty finding them. (Link).

IT was the silence that made this voyage different from all of those before it … What was missing was the cries of the seabirds which, on all previous similar voyages, had surrounded the boat. The birds were missing because the fish were missing.

Exactly 10 years before, when Newcastle yachtsman Ivan Macfadyen had sailed exactly the same course from Melbourne to Osaka, all he’d had to do to catch a fish from the ocean between Brisbane and Japan was throw out a baited line … But this time, on that whole long leg of sea journey, the total catch was two. No fish. No birds. Hardly a sign of life at all. (Link).

A $32-million commercial fishery has inexplicably and completely collapsed this year on the B.C. coast.

The sardine seine fleet has gone home after failing to catch a single fish. And the commercial disappearance of the small schooling fish is having repercussions all the way up the food chain to threatened humpback whales.

Humpbacks are telling us that something has changed … Ocean systems are so complex, it’s really hard to know what it means. For one year, I don’t think there’s any reason to be alarmed, but there is certainly reason to be curious. (Link).

Across North America, in places as far-flung as Montana and British Columbia, New Hampshire and Minnesota – moose populations are in steep decline. And no one is sure why.

Twenty years ago, Minnesota had two geographically separate moose populations. One of them has virtually disappeared since the 1990s, declining to fewer than 100 from 4,000.

The other population, in northeastern Minnesota, is dropping 25 percent a year and is now fewer than 3,000, down from 8,000. (The moose mortality rate used to be 8 percent to 12 percent a year.) As a result, wildlife officials have suspended all moose hunting. (Link).

The deadly fungus, which is rife across mainland Europe, is now out of control in the East and South East of England and there have been outbreaks in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The latest official figures reveal there are 571 infected sites in Britain, with 334 linked to imported ash trees, 213 in the wider environment and 24 in nurseries. (Link).

Twenty years ago you had to look pretty hard to find any occurrences of this disease, and now it’s everywhere.

In recent years the white plague has killed 70-80 percent of some coral reefs.

Reports of non-bleaching coral disease have increased more than 50 times since 1965, and are contributing to declines in coral abundance and cover. (Link).

Aboriginal people in British Columbia who rely on Skeena River sockeye are facing some extremely difficult decisions as sockeye salmon returns plunge to historic lows.

Only 453,000 sockeye are expected to swim along the Skeena this year, Kotyk said, compared to approximately 2.4 million last year, forcing all commercial and recreational Skeena sockeye fisheries to be closed.

… We think something happened in the ocean … We’ve never seen anything like this in all these years I’ve done this. I’ve asked the elders and they have never seen anything like this at all. (Link).

The outcome of the meeting demonstrates that there are simply too many industrial fishing vessels plundering the Pacific, using highly destructive fishing techniques that have wide and damaging impacts on the ecosystem.

The Pacific region’s most valuable tuna, the Pacific bluefin, is now down to just four per cent of its original stock size and other tuna stocks are at risk of following this catastrophic decline unless urgent management action is taken. (Link).

(NOTE: this has been translated) The last more than 10 years, bees are a large number of deaths worldwide, the number of bees are being phased out. Germany’s colonies fell from 1.2 million in 1990 by nearly half. (Link).

Above-average occurrences of dolphins washing ashore dead or dying along the US East Coast has marine scientists concerned.

The Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center initially dismissed suggestions that the dolphin deaths were connected, but now it is reevaluating its position. We are a little bit concerned about it, the Virginia Aquarium’s Mark Swingle told WAVY. It’s definitely at a much higher level than we’re used to seeing at this time of year. (Link).

Declines in birds across the globe are providing evidence of a rapid deterioration in the global environment that is affecting all life on earth – including people.

The status of the world’s birds continues to get worse with many species slipping towards extinction and others in steep decline … Birds provide an accurate and easy to read environmental barometer that allows us to see clearly the pressures our current way of life are putting on the world’s biodiversity. (Link).

The Atlantic puffin population is at risk in the United States, and there are signs the seabirds are in distress in other parts of the world. The survival rates of fledglings on Maine’s two largest puffin colonies plunged last summer, and puffins are in declining health at the largest puffin colony in the Gulf, on a Canadian island about 10 miles off eastern Maine. There are enough signals suggesting that puffins and other seabirds could be in trouble, said Rebecca Holberton, a professor at the University of Maine who has studied puffins for years. (Link).

The State of Nature report, compiled by 25 wildlife organisations – from the RSPB to the British Lichen Society – collates assessments of 3,148 species. According to the document, reasons for the decline are many and varied but include rising temperatures and habitat degradation.
– Turtle doves have declined by 93% since 1970.
– Hedgehogs have declined by around a third since the millennium.
– The small tortoiseshell butterfly has declined in abundance by 77% in the last ten years.
– The early bumblebee (Bombus pratorum) and the tormentil mining bee (Andrena tarsata) have shown strong declines in range since 1970.
– The population size of the V-moth is estimated to be less than 1% of what it was in the 1960s.
– Corn cleavers has undergone one of the most dramatic declines of any plant species. (Link).

In moist, mossy rooms, rows of glass aquariums bathed in eerie light shelter the last of the last of the frogs. It is a secure facility, for here reside the sole survivors of their species, rescued from the wild before a modern plague swept through their forests and streams in a ferocious doomsday event that threatens the planet’s amphibians with extinction.

The caretakers hope they will be able to encourage these finicky, exotic, mysterious captives to breed, and then return their progeny – somehow, someday, somewhere – to the wild. It is much harder than you might think. Because the thing that is killing the frogs is still out there.

In the pristine tropical forests of the world, the waters still run clear and clean, and the jungle is, as ever, a riot of green, grasping life. But something is missing. Where there was once a crazy cacophony of frog song, all day, all night, there is now a spooky quiet. The streams have gone silent. The frogs are gone. (Link).

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The fate of a major European ecosystem depends on populations of a tiny, mouse-like creature: the vole. Voles are close to the bottom of the food chain, and the fate of these animals tends to have a ripple effect on the rest of the ecosystem, said ecologist Xavier Lambin of the University of Aberdeen in the U.K. The shrinking of population booms will have a profound effect on vole predators, such as owls, kestrels, weasels and foxes, Lambin said. (Link).

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Bucks County’s largest bat population has met a grim fate. Scientists have confirmed that nearly all of the 10,000 bats that have hibernated in an abandoned iron ore mine in Upper Bucks for generations have died.

Bucks County’s bats were wiped out by a disease that has been killing bat colonies across the Northeast at an alarming rate in the last four years … In Pennsylvania, 98 percent of cave-hibernating bats have died. (Link).

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The deadly and mysterious fungus has killed millions of bats since it was first observed in February 2006. The fungus has now been found in 22 US states and five Canadian provinces … bat populations that contract the fungus have a 70 to 100 percent mortality rate. There is no known cure or treatment. (Link).

Forest elephant numbers have decreased by 62% across Central Africa over the last 10 years, according to a study … The analysis confirmed fears that African forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) are heading for extinction, possibly within the next decade … Although we were expecting to see these results, we were horrified that the decline over the period of a mere decade was over 60%, Dr Maisels told BBC Nature (Link).

SEABIRD populations in Scotland are continuing to fall dramatically, according to a new report published by Scottish Natural Heritage … Over a 25-year period, they have seen a drop of more than 50 percent … From 1986 to 2011, the numbers of seabirds breeding in Scotland dropped by around 53 per cent, continuing a downward trend over recent years … The worst-hit species included the Arctic skua, down 74 percent, Arctic tern, which fell by 72 percent, and the black-legged kittiwake, down by 66 percent (Link).

The southern Carribean has experienced a collapse of its Sardine fisheries during the past 10 years. They have fallen by as much as 87 percent. Since 2005 plankton levels in the Caribbean have reduced significantly, which, coupled with overfishing, may have contributed to the collapse of these fisheries.

The Venezuelan sardine catch has dropped from about 200,000 tonnes in 2004 to less than 40,000 tonnes today (Link).

Global fish stocks are exploited or depleted to such an extent that without urgent measures, we may be the last generation to catch food from the oceans. Global Fish consumption has hit a record high and around 85 percent of global fish stocks are over-exploited, depleted or fully exploited. Large areas of the seabed resemble a desert. (Link. Also Here)

Adult Cod in the North Sea have been decimated and only around 100 over the age of 13 are left, raising concern over the future of Cod. A survey of catches at European ports has found that fishermen did not catch a single cod over the age of 13 last year (2011). This means that there are fewer eggs and larvae to perpetuate future generations. (Link)

North American freshwater fishes are going extinct at an alarming rate compared with other species. The rate of extinctions increased noticeably after 1950, although it has leveled off in the past decade. The number of extinct species has grown by 25 percent since 1989. At least 57 North American species and subspecies, and 3 unique populations, have gone extinct since 1898. (Link)

The Little Penguin population on Granite Island in Australia has gone from 1600 ten years ago to just 20 today and faces extinction. 160 little penguins have been found dead along South Australia’s coastline in the past year. The full reasons for the decline remains a mystery and fears the colony will soon disappear altogether. (Link)

The first ever case of Cancer (Melanoma) in Fish has been discovered in the Great Barrier Reef, affecting 15% of the Fish there, which could be the harbinger of a human health crisis. The Great Barrier Reef is directly beneath a gaping hole in the Earth’s ozone layer. And this is the first (disturbingly strong) evidence that fish are developing skin cancer from ultraviolet radiation outside of a research laboratory. (Link)

This world is a planet in crisis. During the past 40 years, the numbers of wildlife populations have plummeted by more than 30 percent. It comes in the face of record over-consumption of natural resources with serious implications for human health and well-being. (Link)

The Butterfly in the UK continues to decline with a 40% decline in numbers over the past few years. Butterfly Conservation has blamed the decline on last year’s (2011) record-breaking cold summer, but also said there was a long-term and ongoing deterioration of suitable butterfly habitat across the countryside. (Link)

Devastating declines in farmland birds have seen 300 million being wiped out over past 30 years, which is a 50 percent drop. In order to boost food production across Europe, the wholesale ripping up of hedgerows, draining of wetlands and ploughing over of meadows has robbed farmland birds of their homes and food. Numbers of linnets, turtle doves and lapwings have crashed as a result. (Link)

In the United Kingdom the Bird population has declined by 44 million since 1966. House sparrows were found to be among the worst hit, with numbers down by 20 million compared with the 1960′s. (Link)

One-Fifth Of World’s Invertebrate Species (earthworms to bees to butterflies to lobsters and beyond) face extinction. The scientists report that the creatures face a vast array of different threats, with mollusks suffering from pollution originating from agricultural sources and construction and crayfish facing threats from invasive species and illness. (Link)

Source: End Times Prophecy

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