CO2 Eats at Ocean Creatures

  • Healthy Reef Systems May Be a Thing of The Past(Photo courtesy of Mikael Häggström)

Some scientists think we might be headed for a mass extinction event
in the oceans. When carbon dioxide gets released into the atmosphere,
a lot of that CO2 soaks into the oceans. That makes the water more
acidic. When the pH gets too low, it dissolves the skeletons of
animals like coral and mussels. Ann Dornfeld reports:

Transcript

** The story as originally broadcast incorrectly referred to the publication as “Natural Geoscience.” It should be “Nature Geoscience.”

Some scientists think we might be headed for a mass extinction event
in the oceans. When carbon dioxide gets released into the atmosphere,
a lot of that CO2 soaks into the oceans. That makes the water more
acidic. It can dissolve the skeletons of
animals like coral and mussels. Ann Dornfeld reports:

Fifty-five million years ago, a mass extinction happened when the
oceans became too acidic.

Richard Feely is a chemical oceanographer for the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration. He says that today’s ocean acidification
is happening too quickly for many species to adjust.

“Over the last 200 years we’ve seen a 30-percent increase in acidity
of the oceans, and about six percent of that increase of acidity of
the oceans has been in the last 15 years.”

Researchers at the University of Bristol in England ran simulations of
the acidification processes 55 million years ago and today. They found
that acidification is happening ten times faster these days than it
did before the prehistoric mass extinction.

That could mean that if we don’t slow our release of CO2 into the
atmosphere, life in our oceans could crash within a century or two.
The study is published in the journal of Nature Geoscience.

For the Environment Report, I’m Ann Dornfeld.

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‘World’s Biggest Company’ in Crisis

  • The Black-and-White Ruffed Lemur, threat category: Critically Endangered (Photo by Jean-Christophe Vié, courtesy of the IUCN)

There’s a new report out on the
state of the world’s creatures.
It’s called the Red List of Threatened
Species. And, as you can imagine,
the Red List is not a good list to
be on. Mark Brush has more:

Transcript

There’s a new report out on the state of the world’s creatures. It’s called the Red List of Threatened Species. And, as you can imagine, the Red List is not a good list to be on. Mark Brush has more:

This report is put out by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. They cataloged about 45,000 species worldwide. They say about 38% of those are threatened with extinction.

Species sometimes naturally go extinct. But, the researchers say, today’s extinction rates are happening a lot faster – mostly because people are destroying habitat.

Jean-Christophe Vié is the senior editor of the report.

“If you think of nature as a company, it’s the largest in the world. So now we are in this economic crisis, if there was one company to save, it’s not the car industry, or saving a bank – it’s saving nature, because it’s for the benefit of all of us.”

Vié says they were only able to report on about 3% of all the known species around the world.

But, they still feel they have a pretty good idea of the overall trend. And it’s not a good trend.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

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Whooping Cranes Suit Up for Fall Flight

Fifteen more endangered whooping cranes are are following ultralight aircraft through the Midwest, on the way to Florida. It’s part of an experiment to create a migrating flock of the birds in the Eastern U.S. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

Fifteen more endangered whooping cranes are about to follow ultralight aircraft
through the
Midwest, on the way to Florida. It’s part of an experiment to create a migrating
flock of the birds
in the Eastern U.S. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:


This is the third year that pilots wearing cranelike costumes are leading a flock of
young
whooping cranes on the birds first southerly migration from Wisconsin. About twenty
cranes
now migrate on their own. A public-private partnership is trying to create a flock
of 125
whoopers, including two dozen breeding pairs.


Larry Wargowsky is the manager at the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge, which is the
starting
point of the birds flight. He says it’s important to keep building the numbers of
young cranes
because it takes 4 to 7 years for them to mature.


“If it takes that long, there’s a chance of birds having fatalities. They hit power
lines, always
disease, parasites, injuries of some sort. So you need more birds.”


The only other migrating flock of whooping cranes travels between Canada and Texas.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Chuck Quirmbach.

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CANADIAN ‘SPECIES-AT-RISK’ ACT TOO WEAK?

More than 1,300 U.S. and Canadian scientists are asking the Canadian government to strengthen proposed legislation that would protect endangered species. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly explains:

Transcript

More than 13 hundred U.S. and Canadian scientists are asking the Canadian government to strengthen proposed legislation that would protect endangered species. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports.


Right now, endangered species in Canada have no federal protection. The new Species at Risk Act would make it illegal for people to kill the 3 hundred 80 plants and animals considered at risk. But unlike the American law, the proposal does not guarantee that the land or waters in which these animals live will be protected from development. University of Ottawa biology professor David Currie says that’s led to a protest among scientists.


“Virtually all of the studies that have been done on the reasons why species become endangered or go extinct have shown that at least some aspect of habitat loss is involved and in many of the most dramatic cases of extinction, species’ habitats have been simply been entirely wiped out.”


The government’s environment committee will consider amendments to the bill in October. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly.