Environment

• Thursday, July 30th 2020 - 09:05 UTC

  Ecuador fishery resources threatened by a fleet of 260 Chinese vessels

  

  Ecuador is on alert due to the appearance of a huge fleet of mostly Chinese-flagged fishing vessels off its Galapagos Islands. Patrols are trying to ensure the fleet - which is made up of around 260 vessels - does not enter the delicate eco-system from international waters.

• Monday, July 27th 2020 - 09:32 UTC

  Argentina ready to launch satellite to monitor logging of native forests mainly in Chaco

  

  Argentina plans to put into orbit a satellite with new precision technology sometime this week, to monitor the felling of its native forests round the clock and accurately measure forest carbon stocks in a bid to help curb climate change, scientists said.

• Saturday, July 25th 2020 - 08:39 UTC

  Argentine Patagonia provinces under a blanket of snow

  

  Continuous snowfalls have blanketed Argentine Patagonia provinces together with extremely low temperatures, in what is considered the worst winter since the nineties, according to the Argentinean Meteorological System. The meter-high snow is threatening agriculture, livestock and has interrupted traffic.

• Friday, July 24th 2020 - 09:05 UTC

  Ecuador promotes mining but with stricter regulation for waste dams

  

  Ecuador unveiled new, tighter regulations for the design and construction of mining waste dams, seeking to avoid disasters like the tailings dam collapse that killed hundreds at a Vale site in Brazil last year.

• Thursday, July 23rd 2020 - 07:34 UTC

  Scientists confirm active methane seep from Antarctica's seabed

  

  Scientists have discovered an active methane seep from Antarctica's sea bed that could shed light on the potent greenhouse gas trapped beneath frozen continent. Marine ecologist Andrew Thurber first glimpsed what a colleague described as a “microbial waterfall” during a dive in the icy waters of the Ross Sea in 2012.

• Wednesday, July 22nd 2020 - 08:00 UTC

  Parana river insufficient water level benefitted exports from Brazilian ports

  

  Due to the Paraná river drought, which affected Argentina’s soy oil-exporting capacity, Cattalini Terminais Marítimos, which handles almost 70% of Brazil’s soy oil exports through its facilities in the port of Paranaguá, predicts a 25% increase in shipments this year.

• Tuesday, July 21st 2020 - 08:50 UTC

  A fifth of Brazilian soy exports to EU may have come from illegally deforested land

  

  A study published by Science magazine on July 16 indicated that a fifth of Brazilian soy imports received by the European Union may come from land that has been illegally deforested.

• Tuesday, July 21st 2020 - 08:44 UTC

  Climate change starving polar bears to extinction, according to latest report

  

  Climate change is starving polar bears into extinction, according to research published on Monday that predicts the apex carnivores could all but disappear within the span of a human lifetime.

• Tuesday, July 21st 2020 - 08:41 UTC

  Italian frogmen try to free a sperm whale caught in abandoned fishing net

  

  The Italian coastguard has been working for days to free a massive sperm whale caught in an abandoned fishing net in open sea off the Sicilian Aeolian Islands. The whale was spotted on Saturday struggling to get free of a net usually used for fishing illegally for swordfish.

• Friday, July 17th 2020 - 04:41 UTC

  Falklands Seafood industry faces environment of uncertainty

  

  The Falkland Islands Seafood industry continues to face an environment of great uncertainty, Falkland Islands Fishing Companies Association (FIFCA) Executive Secretary James Bates told Penguin News this week.