Fishing is one of the most important employers and sources of protein for coastal communities in Belize. Yet bottom trawls and other kinds of unselective fishing gear cause harm to other fisheries and to the marine environment by catching juvenile fish, damaging the seafloor, and leading to overfishing.

Australia’s desert frogs are famously able to store up large amounts of water in their bladder to last them through the drought. But now researchers from Charles Darwin University in the Northern Territory have found that frog bladders can hold another, even more bizarre surprise.

The Environmental Protection Agency said on Wednesday it was again delaying its final rule on smog limits, with the rule now expected by the end of July 2011. This is the third time the agency has delayed the smog standards, originally slated to be finalized in August. The initial standards proposed near the start of…

Which is better to be? Wild and free or tame and domesticated? That has always been an interesting philosophical question. Professor Mark Viney and colleagues at the University of Bristol compared the immune function of wild mice who have to find their own food with that of mice bred in captivity who have all food…

ScienceDaily (Dec. 8, 2010) — A new NASA computer modeling effort has found that additional growth of plants and trees in a world with doubled atmospheric carbon dioxide levels would create a new negative feedback — a cooling effect — in the Earth’s climate system that could work to reduce future global warming.

Political rancor seems likely to derail a vitally important piece of legislation affecting the renewable energy sector. The Investment Tax Credit (ITC) grant scheme was introduced as part of the 2009 U.S. stimulus package, and it was considered a key piece of legislation by the green sector because it supported the industry during an economic…

Conservation appears to be working for the Critically Endangered mountain gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei) in the Virunga massif region, as a new census shows an additional 100 individuals from the last census in 2003, an increase of over a quarter. The Virunga massif is a region in three nations—Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and…

Saying the health of the planet is at stake, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged 190 nations meeting in Mexico on Tuesday to agree to steps to fight climate change that fall short of a perfect deal. “We cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” Ban told a first session of environment ministers…

Every year, people line up to get flu vaccines at pharmacies and doctor’s offices because the flu develops new strains, requiring the vaccines to be updated. What if there was a single flu vaccine you could take to last for decades against any flu virus strain? Such a thing would make yearly trips to get…

Ten European countries, including Norway, have agreed to develop an offshore electricity grid at the North Sea, in a bold move that promoters say will give Europe the possibility of tapping into an even bigger source of energy than the Middle East’s oil capacity. Ministers from all the ten ‘North Seas Countries’ signed of a…