Wildlife

Shark Extinction

New research reveals that sharks are disappearing at an alarming rate in a trend that is upsetting the ecological balance across many marine ecosystems. Writing in the journal Nature, scientists say that habitat destruction and overfishing have caused shark numbers to crash in many of the world’s coral reefs. Underwater cameras used in the study revealed that one in five of the 371 reefs studied during a four-year period had shark numbers so low that the species there could be considered “functionally extinct.” This is causing further stress on reefs that are also under threat from global heating and the ocean acidification brought on by a changing climate.

Chipmunk Antics

A bumper crop of acorns last fall in New England has led to a population explosion of chipmunks, which are pestering homeowners and generally making a nuisance of themselves. With plenty of food to fuel their high jinks after emerging this spring, the rodents have been digging up people’s gardens and tunneling beneath lawns. But some say they can also be entertaining. “They’re cute. They’re fun to watch in the forest as they duck in and out of the holes and play peekaboo,” small mammal biologist Shevenell Webb, with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, told The Associated Press. The plentiful acorns also fueled a population boom of squirrels, rabbits and various types of mice in the region.

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