The captain and the navigation officer of a container ship that smashed into a reef off a popular New Zealand holiday resort were jailed on Friday for causing the country's worst environmental disaster in decades.

The two men, captain Mauro Balomaga and navigation officer Leonil Relon, both Filipino nationals, were jailed for seven months. They had faced maximum terms of seven years imprisonment.

The growing of tea invariably replaces biodiversity-rich tropical forests with a beautiful, but single species (monoculture). Soil erosion, competition for water, pollution from fertilizers and the requirement of firewood to fuel tea driers, are some of the main environmental concerns that accompany commercial tea cultivation.

By following the Sustainable Agriculture Network Standard, tea growers can pro-actively address social and environmental challenges. By complying with the requirements of this standard, tea estates can obtain "Rainforest Alliance Certification".

Close on the heels of rising poaching of big cats, National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) in a strong advisory addressed to all the Chief Wildlife Wardens (CWW) has stated “every case of tiger and leopard death should henceforth be treated as case of poaching unless otherwise proved beyond reasonable doubt”.

Development activities, human settlements narrowing pathways

Most of the elephant migratory corridors in the State are under threat, experts have found, even as the High Court’s June deadline for the government to submit a report on man-elephant conflict in Hassan and Kodagu is fast approaching.

Union minister of state for forests Jayanthi Natarajan on Wednesday announced a recovery programme for saving critically endangered species and their habitats.

Under the initiative, 16 species have been identified for support. This includes snow leopard, bustards (including floricans), dolphin, hangul, Nilgiri tahr, marine turtles, dugongs and coral reefs, edible nest swiftlet, Asian wild buffalo, Nicobar megapode, Manipur brow-antlered deer, vultures, Malabar civet, Indian rhinoceros, asiatic lion, swamp deer and jerdon’s courser.

Shortly before Thanksgiving in 2010, the leaders of the commission President Obama had appointed to investigate the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico sat down in the Oval Office to brief him.

After listening to their findings about the BP accident and the safety of deepwater drilling, the president abruptly changed the subject.

“Where are you coming out on the offshore Arctic?” he asked.

Small, busy and overcrowded, England might seem the last place in the world to have room for one of the planet's largest inhabited areas of unspoiled, natural darkness when night falls.

But if plans by Kielder Forest and the adjacent Northumberland national park are realised, the country will be home to an official "dark sky preserve" equalled only by two lonely areas in Quebec and Texas.

A wildlife official says that about 5,000 elephants have been killed by poachers over the past five years around the Nouabale Ndoki National Park in the Republic of Congo.

Thomas Breuer, a senior technical official of the Wildlife Conservation Society project in the park, says that authorities must take action and double guards around the park.

Breuer says that while poaching around the park is intensifying, poaching inside is not as prevalent.

A western Indian state has declared war on animal poaching, allowing forest guards to shoot hunters on sight to curb attacks on tigers, elephants and other wildlife.

The government in Maharashtra says injuring or killing suspected poachers will no longer be considered a crime.