Ten Environmental Losses of 2009

Global Warming Not Going Gently

2009 saw vast patches of the planet protected and world leaders pledge to fight global warming, but the climate continued to change dramatically--putting it in the "loss" column for the environment this year, according to experts .

Joshua Reichert, managing director of the Pew Environment Group in Washington, D.C., said the "overarching problem of climate" is one of many environmental challenges that have worsened.

Conservationist Stuart Pimm added, "This isn't just some gentle sort of warming process, we are in major ways disrupting the climate. The debates now on climate change are whether the consensus is too mild. Many people think the Antarctic and Arctic ice is melting a lot faster than the consensus.

"I think [global warming] would probably be my pick for the gloomiest story" of 2009, added Pimm, a conservation biologist at Duke University.


Oceans Begin to Lose Appetite for Carbon

As the world's greenhouse gas emissions continued to rise this year and further disrupt the global climate, the oceans appeared to lose some of their appetite to absorb carbon dioxide, a key gas implicated in the planet's warming, according to a November study.

The study spanned the years between 2000 and 2007. In that time the amount of carbon from human activity absorbed by the oceans fell from 27 to 24 percent. Why the oceans are less hungry for carbon is unclear, but it may be related to the acidification of the oceans due to too much carbon, according to the study, led by Samar Khatiwala, an oceanographer at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.


Drought-Stricken Kenya Loses Out on Rain, Again

Tens of elephants and hundreds of other animals have perished so far amid the worst drought to hit Kenya in more than a decade, conservationists announced this past summer. The so-called long rains, which usually bring relief to the region in March and April, never arrived this year, extending the drought into its third year for parts of the East African country.

Why the drought is occurring is unknown. Some people blame global climate change. Others say it's due to long-term weather cycles.

Whatever the cause, the drought has driven cattle herders to illegally bring their animals deep into Kenya's parks and reserves in search of water, where they outcompete wildlife for a drink. "It's really been a body blow to our animals," Paul Udoto, a spokesperson for the Kenya Wildlife Service.


Wolves Lose Protection, Hunts Begin

In May the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service formally removed the gray wolf in the northern Rockies from protection under the federal Endangered Species Act, which some conservationists saw as a loss for the environment. A few months late, wildlife managers in Idaho and Montana approved the first wolf hunts in decades.

Hunters began legally pursuing wolves on September 1 in Idaho. As of November 30, 114 wolves had been killed in Idaho. Montana's season closed November 16 with 74 killed.

A coalition of conservation groups, including Defenders of Wildlife and the Center for Biological Diversity, had lost a court appeal to halt the hunts. The groups argue that the hunts will likely genetically isolate subgroups of the wolf population, threatening its ability to recover to sustainable levels.

"Although the court's decision to leave wolves unprotected is a setback for recovery, we hope it is a temporary one," Noah Greenwald, endangered species program director for the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a media statement.


Caribbean Loses Sharks, Barracudas

Some sharks and barracuda species no longer roam the reefs of the Caribbean, scientists announced in May. Fishers have wiped reefs clean of the big predators.

Smaller predators, such as invasive Pacific lionfish that escaped from aquariums, have begun to fill in the niches left by the bigger fish, sending the coral reef community into flux.

"Healthy and intact coral reefs need large predatory fish in order to continue to provide human societies with food and with beauty," study author Chris Stallings, a researcher at Florida State University's Coastal and Marine Laboratory.

The loss of predators is part of the "litany of doom and despair" that Duke University's Pimm said befalls the environmental movement every year. "We are still chopping down the forest, we are still dumping a lot of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, we are still overfishing," he said.



Hope Lost for the Arctic Ice Sheet?

The Arctic ice cap has been on a steady, staggered march toward its summer-time death for more than a decade. This year the idea of an Arctic Sea devoid of ice in summers resonated with the public, according to Bill Eichbaum, a vice president with the international conservation group WWF.

The loss of the ice "puts at risk iconic figures like the polar bear, the walrus--and it also puts at risk the people that live sustainably with that wildlife in their regions," Eichbaum said. "I think we realize that that is happening in the Arctic and that it is a huge loss."



Carbon Monitoring Satellite Crashes

A satellite meant to orbit the Earth and monitor global carbon dioxide emissions suffered a glitch at takeoff in February and crashed into the ocean near Antarctica.

Researchers had hoped the Orbiting Carbon Observatory would provide new insights into the distribution of the greenhouse gases around the globe—data that could have improved climate predictions.

NASA officials called the U.S. $270 million mission, under development for nine years, a total loss.


Lemurs Added to Bush-meat Menu

Until a March coup d'etat stirred up political unrest on the African island nation of Madagascar>, lemurs had largely escaped the fate of other primates hunted as bush meat. That has changed, conservationists reported in August.

Criminal gangs are now fueling demand for the primates among well-to-do restaurant patrons.

The turn of events is one of the more visible conservation setbacks since President Marc Ravalomanana was ousted from office and all foreign funding to keep the nation's national parks running was cut off.

"More than anything else, these poachers are killing the goose that laid the golden egg, wiping out the very animals that people most want to see and undercutting the country and especially local communities by robbing them of future conservation revenue," Russell Mittermeier, President of Conservation International, said in media statement.


NASA Satellite Highlights India Groundwater Loss

NASA scientists used a pair of tandem orbiting satellites called the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, or GRACE, to get a read on how quickly the groundwater is disappearing under northern India's heavily irrigated fields of wheat, rice, and barley.

The findings, reported in August in the journal Nature, show that 26 cubic miles (109 cubic kilometers) vanished between 2002 and 2008. The discovery suggests that current water use rates are unsustainable and, if continued, will eventually impact the nation's food supply, said Sandra Postel, director of the Global Water Policy Project.

"We are already beginning to see this happen in parts of India where wells have already been taken out of production because it has either gotten too expensive to pump the water from deeper down or the wells are just too salty or dry," she said.



Health Care, Economy Steal Environment's U.S. Political Momentum

Environmental issues were in the spotlight this year when U.S. President Barack Obama appointed leading scientists to top government posts, such as Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association Administrator Jane Lubchenco.

But that light dimmed as the administration tackled a faltering economy, debated a national health care policy, and delayed action on an energy bill that would have curbed domestic greenhouse gas emissions.

"They've been able to devote less of their time and attention than much of the conservation community would have liked to see on the issue of climate," said Joshua Reichert, the managing director of the Pew Environment Group, a Washington, D.C.-based international environmental policy group.