Biodiversity

"Montpellier, France -- Pesticides, viruses, industrialised farming, fungus... what on Earth is killing our bees? That's the big question being asked at Apimondia, the 41st world apiculture congress, where 10,000 beekeepers, entomologists and other actors in the honey business are gathered in this southern French city until Sunday."

In recent years, the media has paid a great deal of attention to the loss of European honeybees, the so-called Colony Collapse Disorder. Less well known, but equally troublesome, is the disappearance of bumblebees. As Adam Federman reports in the Autumn edition of Earth Island Journal, bumblebees pollinate about 15 percent of our food crops (valued at $3 billion) and occupy a critical role as native pollinators. Many species are in sharp decline or appear to have gone extinct.

"Even as Idaho has sold more than 14,000 wolf-hunting permits, the first 10 days of the first legal wolf hunt here in decades have yielded only three reported legal kills."

"It's called the Great Bear Rainforest, but few grizzly bears have been seen on British Columbia's north and central coast this year. Conservationists and bear viewing guides are blaming the disappearance of the bears on the overfishing of salmon, their main food source."

"With four gray wolves having been killed in Idaho since Sept. 1, a federal judge has cleared the way for legal hunting of the once-endangered predators to proceed."

"Yorba Linda, close to one of last year's major burn areas, is among cities trapping and killing the predators. Animal activists object, and more debate is planned."

"By certifying species as endangered, government programs can backfire."

After the dolphin hunt in Taiji, Japan, was covertly filmed in the award-winning documentary, "The Cove," no hunting seemed to be going on on the opening day of this year's hunting season.