Kids News - Environment Articles

Rising water temperatures and the increasing levels of carbon dioxide in our oceans are killing our beautiful coral reefs at an unprecedented rate. Add the current El Nino weather pattern that is expected to prevail through winter and spring 2016 to the mix, and things look even worse. Scientists estimate that the 1988 El Nino destroyed almost 16% of the world's coral reefs and believe things could get even worse this time around....

Most people have a love-hate relationship with gum. For delicious as it is, the sticky, tasteless waste that remains is not just annoying, especially when inadvertently stepped upon, but also, harmful to the environment. That's because the primary ingredient in most modern chewing gums is synthetic rubber which is not biodegradable. With an estimated 560,000 tons of gum being chewed each year, this adds a lot of unwanted polymer to our already overwhelmed landfills. Now thanks to Gumdrop Ltd., there may be a solution to this sticky problem....

On September 25th, US first lady Michelle Obama and China's first lady Peng Liyuan announced that the recently born giant panda at Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington D.C. would be called Bei Bei. The name which means 'precious treasure' in Mandarin Chinese, was selected from a list suggested by officials at the zoo and the Wolong Nature Reserve in China....

When the team of marine biologists led by David Gruber of the City University of New York headed to Solomon Islands in the South Pacific in late July, they were hoping to film some biofluorescent sharks and coral reefs. What they had never expected to find was the world's first-known biofluorescent reptile....

When one thinks of sandcastles the image that comes to mind is usually that of building a masterpiece not staying inside one. However, some lucky visitors to the Netherlands can experience both thanks to two new pop-up sand hotels in the cities of Oss and Sneek....

As far as age goes, the 220-year-old apple tree in Krolevets, Ukraine, is a young pup. After all, California's giant sequoias and redwoods have been around for thousands of years. However, none can do what this unique tree has been able to - Self-propagate a colony of fifteen family trees that combined cover an area of 1,000 sq. meters (10,763 sq.feet)....

Mention wasps and you are bound to hear exasperated tales of picnic sabotages and painful stings. But as it turns out, humans have it relatively easy, at least compared to some poor spiders that the wasps turn into web-weaving zombie slaves....

Japanese fisherman Hiroshi Hirasaka has an unusual hobby. He likes to catch and eat exotic and bizarre-looking creatures.The avid hunter has even outlined his conquests in a book called "Exotic Fish Species: I Caught, Judged and Tried Eating." Hence, you can only imagine his delight when he reeled in yet another scary looking specimen off the coast of Japan's Hokkaido Island, on August 30th....

On August 28, six researchers who barely know each other made their way to the slopes of the Mauna Loa volcano on Hawaii's Big Island for a year-long "vacation." However, the crew of three men and three women that includes a soil scientist, a doctor, a post-grad architect student, and an astrobiologist, did not check into a fancy resort. Instead, they locked themselves up inside a solar-powered dome without fresh air, fresh food, or privacy....