President Sheikh Mohamed has directed an expansion of nature reserves in Abu Dhabi to reach about a third of the emirate’s total land area. The announcement comes at the close of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s World Conservation Congress, which was held at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre during the past week. It was the first […]
Dubai’s plan to create one of the world’s largest man-made reefs is already showing promising ecological returns. Newly released footage from the Dubai Reef project shows schools of native fish circling concrete reef modules – the first tangible signs of recovery in the emirate’s marine habitat. Since the project’s launch, its team says fish biomass has increased eightfold, […]
Scientists warn that climate change is threatening the seaweed’s ability to store carbon and support biodiversity. Marine forests off the north coast of Portugal play a major role in carbon capture and storage, scientists have discovered. The pioneering research comes from Portugal’s Interdisciplinary Centre of Marine and Environmental Research (CIIMAR) and Marine and Environmental Sciences […]
One of Iraq’s most beautiful natural wonders and a cradle of surviving Sumerian traditions, the southern marshes now evoke more grief than awe. Aymen al-Ameri reflects upon their deterioration in An Imaginary Museum on the Ground, a photography exhibition that opened in July at the Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris. Far from mere documentation, the project comes after a decade […]
Using climate attribution science, researchers have linked rising heat to declining bird populations around the world. Extreme heat driven by climate change has caused tropical bird populations to decline by up to 38 per cent since the 1950s, scientists have warned. A first-of-its-kind analysis published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution has used observed […]
Abu Dhabi environment officials have hailed the first recorded sighting of a whitespotted grouper in the emirate’s waters as a “major biodiversity milestone”. The Environment Agency Abu Dhabi captured images of the species in September. The fish is not considered critically endangered globally but its presence in Abu Dhabi waters is rare and was previously undocumented. […]
A Dubai lawyer who has spent four decades studying plants and animals native to the Emirates has had a species of gecko named after him. Scientists have named it Feulner’s semaphore gecko (Pristurus feulneri) after Gary Feulner. The name is a reference to how it communicates using its tail and body. The gecko is commonly found across […]
A new study sheds light on the power of keystone species, which could help ecologists in other environments. A sea otter floating above ribbons of kelp is undoubtedly one of nature’s cutest scenes. It’s well known that the marine mammals help make these sea surface ‘pillows’ more abundant, by eating the sea urchins that nibble […]
Talks in Colombia in October yielded some significant outcomes but ended in confusion. An annual United Nations conference on biodiversity that ran out of time last year will resume its work on Tuesday in Rome with money at the top of the agenda. That is, how to spend what’s been pledged so far – and […]
Humanity can farm more food from the seas to help feed the planet while shrinking mariculture’s negative impacts on biodiversity, according to new research led by the University of Michigan. There is a catch, though: We need to be strategic about it. “We can achieve this sustainable mariculture development,” said Deqiang Ma, who led the […]
