Our Dying Planet

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We have reached a stage now is this earth's history where everything is dying. Our planet is groaning and aching under the burden of sin. The oceans and the air are polluted, and man, in his quest for power and wealth is destroying this world like never before in history. And if you read Revelation 11:18, you will see what God is going to do to those who destroy His beautiful creation.

Bees continue to die off in massive numbers. See our MASS BEE DIE OFF page for the list.

NOTE: → (During the Past 7 years) A die-off of 6.7 million bats has occured in America due to the "white-nose syndrome" ... Causing a 90% fall in bat populations. (Which has caused a "Potential Extinction" Event!) Link and here

Now why are these mass deaths of Bees and Bats a concern for the world? Because Honey Bees don't just make honey. They also do the vital job of pollinating the majority of the flowering crops we have, from which we get much of our fruits, vegetables and nuts ... including Beans, Soybean, Broccoli, Sprouts, Carrots, Cucumber, Onion, Parsnip, Squash, Tomato, Almonds, Cashew, Apple, Blackberry, Blueberry, Cacao, Coffee, Grapes, Kiwi, Mango, Pear, Raspberry, Alfalfa, Sesame, Sunflower ... Just to name a few. A major part of the human diet comes from insect-pollinated plants.

And what about the bats? Well, not only do they help in pollinating other foods we eat, like Bananas, Mangoes, Dates, Figs, Peaches, Cashews, Guava and Avocados. They also consume incredible amounts of insects that are agricultural pests. The millions of bats that have died due to disease over the past 6 years would have consumed HUNDREDS OF TONNES of insects (pests) in ONE YEAR. Add this to the struggling crops because of adverse weather and you will see the problem. BUT, this is just to show that we are living in the end times. Those of us who trust in and follow Christ Jesus need not worry, as our food will always be provided by our Great Saviour and Protector.

Researchers discover red tide is deadlier than first thought (Link). And what will the 2nd and 3rd plagues be? ... Revelation 16:3-4 ...'And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea; and it became as the blood of a dead man: and every living soul died in the sea. And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and fountains of waters; and they became blood.' (Note: The plagues have not yet begun)

According to reports, Russia has dumped enormous amounts of radioactive waste and nuclear reactors into Arctic Sea and America has dumped millions of munitions into the sea ... This is an example of what man is doing to the oceans, apart from all the massive oil leaks into the seas.

Revelation 11:18 ...'And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that thou shouldest give reward unto thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear thy name, small and great; and shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth.'

This is what God said to those who would destroy His creation. All throughout history, man could do little to the earth, apart from dig it with a shovel. But now in these last days, man is completely destroying God's creation through industry, war, over consumption, exploration, pollution, etc. And on this page, you will see the effect this has had on the world's creatures.

Mass mussel casualties, like those in Ohio's Big Darby Creek, are relatively new, and they are now happening worldwide ... The die-off was so extensive he could wade into the protected waterway, reach down, and collect a dead or dying mussel with every step. That fall, thousands of mussels - including two federally-endangered species - perished without warning or explanation. (Link).

Each year since 1996, overall populations of the 81 butterfly species looked at in the study published in the journal PLOS ONE dropped by an average of 2 percent, or 33 percent in total. Three times as many species are seeing populations fall compared with those experiencing positive trends. (Link).

Over the past four years, there has been a downward trend of 50 to 80 percent of sightings across the entire main Hawaiian Islands, something Gabriele called unprecedented. There has also been a decline of nearly 60 percent of sightings in Alaska's Glacier Bay. There is no question that the world is changing, the oceans are changing, Lammers said. The humpback whales are reflecting those changes. (Link).

Some beats on famous rivers like the Spey and the Nith recorded not a single salmon caught during the entire season. Just two salmon were caught on the River Fyne in Argyll this year, where once more than 700 were caught each season. The number of fish caught by anglers has been so low that some estates have stopped selling permits for once-popular beats because there is no fish to catch. (Link).

Scientists have long suspected that insects are in dramatic decline, but new evidence confirms this. Research at more than 60 protected areas in Germany suggests flying insects have declined by more than 75 percent over almost 30 years. And the causes are unknown (Link).

Researchers from the U.S. Forest Service are documenting what they are calling an unprecedented die-off of trees in urban areas across Southern California.

Sycamores, willows, avocado and citrus trees are dying because of the drought, pests and disease infestations. (Link).

It's even worse than we thought. An unexpected coral bleaching event in the South China Sea shows that reefs can heat up substantially more than the surrounding ocean.

In June 2015, the South China Sea warmed by 2 degrees ... The moderate temperature rise was not expected to cause significant coral damage. However, at Dongsha Atoll in the northern part of the sea, the sea surface temperature soared to 6 degrees above average, killing 40 per cent of the coral. (Link).

Large sections of the Great Barrier Reef now dead!

Warmer ocean temperatures could be the reason for huge areas of mangroves dying off in Queensland and the Northern Territory, researchers have said.

Experts have been focusing on hundreds of kilometres of mangroves along the coast of Karumba in Queensland's Gulf Country and at Limmen Bight in the Northern Territory that have turned a ghostly white. (Link).

The world's most endangered sea turtle, the Kemp's Ridley, suffered a 34 percent decline in the number of nests laid in 2015 compared to the year before the BP oil spill.

The study analyzes both the recent decline, seen since 2010, and a stunning massive 99 percent drop in the overall population between 1947 and 1985. The status of the present population is measured against a historic estimate based on film footage shot on a Mexican beach in 1947. (Link).

(HONOLULU) - Rapid Ohi'a Death, is a mysterious disease that has already killed hundreds of thousands of Hawaii's iconic and native Ohi'a, the backbone of Hawaii's native forests and watersheds.

This disease is new to Hawaii and the strain of fungus infecting Ohi'a, has never been described before. While apparently only impacting Big Island forests currently, this has the potential of spreading statewide, so it's critically important we do everything to stop it. (Link).

Scientists have confirmed the third-ever global bleaching of coral reefs is under way and warned it could see the biggest coral die-off in history ... The fact that 2016's bleaching will be added on top of the bleaching that has occurred since June 2014 makes me really worried about what the cumulative impact may be. It very well may be the worst period of coral bleaching we've seen. (Link).

A 150-acre portion of the Florida Gulf Coast is being described as a dead zone by scientists after thousands of birds mysteriously abandoned their typical nesting grounds on the federally protected landscape.

The most surprising is that there isn't just one species of bird that has disappeared - it is virtually all of them, including blue herons, roseate spoonbills, snowy egrets, pelicans and more, according to a report by the Associated Press. And while some bird families have taken up residence on another island close by, the vast majority is nowhere to be found.

It's a dead zone now, said biologist Vic Doig of the US Fish and Wildlife Service to the news outlet. This is where the largest bird colony on the Gulf Coast of Florida used to be. (Link).

The sluggish start to a large forecast run was making many people in the industry restless.

By Sunday, June 28, the Naknek-Kvichack district's run total was about 434,000 sockeye - less than 2 percent of this summer's expected run of 28.8 million. By comparison, the run total on the same date in 2014 was already nearly 5 million.

So far I don't see no hits on my net. Scanning the beach to check out the sites of her relatives and friends, Elford saw just one fish hit a net all morning. They were, however, catching jellyfish by the hundreds. Elford says this is strange timing, as jellyfish are traditionally expected to signal the end of salmon season in August. (Link).

The shift to less-nutritious species in the food web is widespread, but most pronounced in heavily populated South and Central Puget Sound.

Late last May, in this same spot near Deception Pass State Park, Greene and his crew hauled up a net so heavy they couldn't winch it up on deck. But the contents didn't speak well for the health of the ecosystem. Instead of the plump herring and smelt that used to be the dominant forage fish in Puget Sound, the net was bristling with 40,000 sticklebacks - bony, armored fish that seem to be on the upswing. In some parts of the Sound, the researchers' nets are often crammed with jellyfish - another sign of a shift toward a less-productive environment. (Link).

(Translated) Sylvia Earle totals about 70,000 hours underwater doing research and is considered one of the most important Oceanographers in the world.

She says ... '90 percent of large fish have disappeared. Almost 40 percent of phytoplankton that generates oxygen and carbon capture is gone, disrupting the basic system of life on earth. In just 50 years we made the ocean literally collapsed.' (Link).

The shores of Lake Baikal in Siberia, the world's largest body of fresh water and popular tourist destination, are covered with rotting algae dangerous to its unique ecosystem.

Baikal is getting increasingly contaminated by spirogyra, which could pose a threat to the purity of its waters. Now, most of Baikal's shores are covered in rotting spirogyra. Only the western shore remains clean. It has never been detected previously in such a mass abundance. (Link).

Scientists are investigating a new disease found on coral colonies at Kane'ohe Bay on O'ahu that could kill off coral colonies at a rapid rate. Officials with the state Department of Land and Natural Resources hosted a press conference this afternoon saying Acute Montipora White Syndrome was detected on a patch of reefs in the last few weeks.

This disease can spread fast and has the ability to kill a small coral colony within one week. On some Kane'ohe Bay patch reefs we've observed up to 90 percent of Montipora capitata corals affected and the majority of these are likely to die. (Link).

What was once a one-year slump has now turned to a systemic crisis. Shellfish are disappearing from B.C.'s coast - and nobody is quite sure why. It's still a little bit of a mystery, says Chris Harley, a marine biologist at the University of British Columbia

We're not living with the same ocean our parents were living with 30 years ago. It could be warmer water, it could be more acidic water, it could be disease.

Recently there has been no local scallops at all. The supply's gone, says Dave Ratcliff, manager of the Lobster Man on Granville Island. (Link).

The beautiful monarch butterfly, which is also a major pollinator, is being threatened by herbicides that eradicate milkweed, its primary food source. Now, a desperate rejuvenation program is under way to save the species from possible extinction.

A shocking statistic released by the US Fish and Wildlife Service on Monday summed up the plight of the monarch butterfly: Since 1990, about 970 million of the butterflies - 90 percent of the total population - have vanished across the United States. (Link).

An oil spill from a crashed tanker is threatening endangered dolphins and other wildlife in the Sundarbans mangrove region. Bangladesh officials have called the leak an ecological 'catastrophe'.

The tanker, carrying an estimated 350,000 litres (75,000 gallons), of oil collided on Tuesday with another vessel and partly sank in the Sundarbans' Shela river, home to rare Irrawaddy and Ganges dolphins. (Link).

The emerald ash borer, or EAB, a native of East Asia, has already devastated entire ash populations in northern cities such as Detroit, where it first appeared in 2002. Since then, the insect has swept into 22 states across the country. In the summer of 2012 it reached the Kansas City metropolitan area.

There are seven billion ash trees in North America, and within the next few decades, the beetle could kill most of them-a die-off ten times bigger than the one caused by Dutch elm disease (Link).

On 18 September, 2014, Jan had just finished his weekly survey dive at the wharf at Coupeville on Whidbey Island, Washington. He reported that The many mottled sea stars which until recently escaped the wasting disease now were now gone, having died off, and those few survivors didn't look all that healthy, either.

... there were many animals lying exposed on the sandy sea floor, looking limp, sick or dead. Red sea cucumbers were flaccid and dead, while several Aleutian Moon snails were in odd postures ... Also dozens and dozens of Nuttall's cockles were on the sediment surface with their siphons out, instead of being buried as they normally are.

... Dead, dead, dead, and dead - or dying! (Link).

It's a grim reality ... This one is really kind of scarey, because it's been years since one of these little guys have survived ... The productive population is getting smaller and smaller. (Link).

A deadly new disease has emerged that is wiping out amphibians, scientists report.

A number of viruses have been found in northern Spain that are killing frog, toad and newt species. Infected animals can suffer from ulcers on their skin and die from internal bleeding.

Researchers fear the strains, which belong to the Ranavirus group, have already spread to other countries ... since these die-offs began, we've started to see them elsewhere - in China in giant salamanders, and it looks like they are emerging in places like France and the Netherlands as well. (Link).

These days, a few stubborn holdovers streak the sky and paddle the bay, but the legions are gone. The chicks have perished, and their bereft parents have returned to the sea.

Half of Iceland's seabirds nest on this low-lying volcanic outcropping and its neighboring islands in the deep west coast gash called Breidafjordur Bay. Flatey Island used to be covered with chicks snuggled inside rocky hillside burrows, under tall meadow grass, in nests strewn across headlands and shores.

There were thousands! You could hear them, says Olina Jonsdottir, who has lived on this island with her husband, Hafsteinn Gudmundsson, nearly 50 years. She looks out her living room window, past the sheep grazing on knuckles of grass-covered lava, past the black basalt beach, to the few birds drifting over the water beyond. You can't do that anymore. Now there are so few. (Link).

Globally, one in eight - more than 1,300 species - are threatened with extinction, and the status of most of those is deteriorating, according to BirdLife International. And many others are in worrying decline, from the tropics to the poles.

In North America's breadbasket, populations of grassland birds such as sweet-trilling meadowlarks are in free fall, along with those everywhere else on the planet. Graceful fliers like swifts and swallows that snap up insects on the wing are showing widespread declines in Europe and North America.

Eagles, vultures, and other raptors are on the wane throughout Africa. Colonies of seabirds such as murres and puffins on the North Atlantic are vanishing, and so are shorebirds, including red knots in the Western Hemisphere.

Sandpipers, spoonbills, pelicans, and storks, among the migratory birds dependent on the intertidal flats of Asia's Yellow Sea, are under threat. Australian and South American parrots are struggling, and some of the iconic penguins of Antarctica face starvation. (Link).

The continuing drop in the lobster population in Long Island Sound -- as measured by the plummeting number of lobsters taken each year -- is a discouraging economic and cultural fact.

Since 1998, when the lobster catch hit its high of 3.7 million pounds, the take has fallen to a relatively skeletal 121,700 pounds in 2013. At the peak, some 600 full-time lobstermen and more than 1,400 part-time and recreational participants plied the Sound, dropping and hauling their baskets. At latest count, slightly more than 150 full-timers and 227 part-time and recreational people are still involved. (Link).

Scoters are down more than 75 percent from what they were in the late 1970s. Murres have dropped even more. Western grebes have mostly vanished, falling from several hundred thousand birds to about 20,000 ... It's one thing to have a rare species decline, said Joe Gaydos, with the SeaDoc Society. But we're not talking about a few plovers. We're talking about big, common species, and a lot of them. (Link).

Three bacteria seem to be responsible for a disease that has killed most of the Caribbean's reef-building corals.

White band disease causes the outer layer of corals to turn white and peel off. First noticed in the 1970s, it has swept through the Caribbean's staghorn and elkhorn corals. Both are now critically endangered. They are the region's only branched corals, creating most of the complex habitat that animals like fish rely on, so their loss has depleted the entire ecosystem.

'This disease has taken out the key ecosystem architects,' says David Smith of the University of Essex in Colchester, UK. (Link).

We depend on songbirds to keep the Earth's plant life flourishing. Like the bees, it is the birds who pollinate the flowers and disperse the seeds. They keep insects under control, protecting leaves and seeds and human crops.

But according to the world's leading bird scientists, songbirds are disappearing.

By some estimates, we may have lost almost half the songbirds that filled the skies almost forty years ago says respected ornithologist Bridget Stutchbury. Scientists around the globe are in a race against time to discover why this is happening, and what it means. (Link).

Almost a quarter of Europe's bumblebees are at risk of extinction ... threatening pollination of crops worth billions of dollars, a study showed on Wednesday. It is preparing a global study of the bees, whose honeybee cousins are in steep decline because of disease.

Of the five most important insect pollinators of European crops, three are bumblebee species. (Link).

An increase of acidity in the Pacific Ocean is quickly killing off one of the world's most beloved shellfish, the scallop, according to a report by the British Columbia Shellfish Grower's Association.

A recent study warned that ocean acidification is accelerating at a rate unparalleled in the life of the oceans-perhaps the fastest rate in the planet's existence-which is degrading marine ecosystems on a mass scale. (Link).

Moose in Minnesota are dying at an alarming rate, and biologists are perplexed as to why.

In the 1980s, moose numbered about 4,000 in the northwest part of the state; today, there are about 100. In Northeast Minnesota, the population has dropped by half since 2006, to 4,300 from more than 8,800. In 2012, the decline was steep enough - 35 percent - that the state and local Chippewa tribes, which rely on moose meat for subsistence, called off the moose hunt. The mortality rate rebounded slightly this year, but moose continue to die at twice the normal rate to sustain a population. Researchers elsewhere, along the southern edge of moose territory in New Hampshire and Montana, are also beginning to notice declines in the animals' numbers (Link).

THIS REPORT IS FROM 2006

The cause: the disappearance of species due to overfishing, pollution, habitat loss, and climate change ... The researchers analyzed several different kinds of data. Even to these ecology-minded scientists, the results were an unpleasant surprise ... 'I was shocked and disturbed by how consistent these trends are -- beyond anything we suspected,' Worm says in a news release.

'This isn't predicted to happen. This is happening now,' study researcher Nicola Beaumont, PhD, of the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, U.K., says in a news release ... But the issue isn't just having seafood on our plates. Ocean species filter toxins from the water. They protect shorelines. And they reduce the risks of algae blooms such as the red tide. (Link).

Sea life in the Pacific Ocean is dying off at an alarming rate, and the peak of all this death and destruction coincides with a certain nuclear disaster that ironically occurred on the Pacific coast of Japan. Still, scientists analyzing what's referred to as 'sea snot' point their finger at global warming, refusing to even mention the radiation from Fukushima. Normally, this snot covers about 1 percent of the floor. Now, it seems to be covering about 98 percent of it. (Link).

About 28,000 rivers have disappeared from China's state maps, an absence seized upon by environmentalists as evidence of the irreversible natural cost of developmental excesses.

Only 22,909 rivers, covering an area of 100 square kilometres were located by surveyors, compared with the more than 50,000 present in the 1990s, a three-year study by the Ministry of Water Resources and the National Bureau of Statistics found. (Link).

Association of Fishermen in Ukraine has sounded the alarm as 70 types of domestic fish are on the verge of extinction. Experts under 'News of Ukraine magazine' Market Leader found out the reasons that jeopardize fish populations.

According to Alexander Chistyakov, the chairman of the Association of Fishermen of Ukraine, local water bodies are hotbeds for large number of diseases ... In addition, Alexander Chistyakov said that there was a catastrophic decline in domestic flocks of native fish. (Link).

The world's largest tropical desert, the Sahara, has suffered a catastrophic collapse of its wildlife populations, according to a new study led by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Zoological Society of London. They assessed 14 desert species, finding that half of those are regionally extinct or confined to one percent or less of their historical range.

The only species that still inhabits most of its historical range is the Nubian ibex, but even this species is classified as vulnerable due to numerous threats including widespread hunting. (Link).

Surprisingly large numbers of southern right whale calves are dying off the coast of Argentina, sparking concerns among marine scientists and conservation officials.

Something else is going on that has so far defied the efforts of scientists to get to the bottom of the situation. (Link).

(Translated) In the Mediterranean, 17,000 marine species coexist with 300 million tonnes of waste. This was discovered by European scientists. The situation is the same in other seas and oceans. This is not only a threat to marine life, but also for the man - with seafood absorbs non-degradable waste.

Recently, a whale died off the coast of Portugal. Her stomach contained 17kg of plastic. This was enough to kill her. (Link).

The short-tailed shearwater birds migrate 10,000 kilometres from the Bering Sea, between Alaska and Japan, to Australian shores in late September to nest. Dr Lavers said they have eaten little on their journey and are exhausted by the flight.

She said it was normal for wrecks to occur every 10 years, and this usually indicated a particularly poor year for the birds with storms or no fish available on arrival. However, major wrecks had occurred every second year since 2007, pointing to a wider problem, she said ... This isn't just a hiccough. This isn't just a freak event. It is not just that the fish have decided to relocate themselves for one or two years or three years. This is obviously an indication of a much wider problem. (Link).

A Vancouver Aquarium whale researcher is sounding the alarm over what he calls 'puzzling' changes observed in the resident killer whale pods that live off the northern coast of B.C. and Alaska.

Barrett-Lennard says one resident pod has lost seven matriarchs over the past two years, an unusually high death rate, and he's also noticed a lack of vocalizations from the normally chatty mammals. Resident killer whales are typically very vocal in the summer but, for the second year in a row, they have been remarkably quiet, says Barrett-Lennard. So quiet that we often had difficulty finding them. (Link).

IT was the silence that made this voyage different from all of those before it ... What was missing was the cries of the seabirds which, on all previous similar voyages, had surrounded the boat. The birds were missing because the fish were missing.

Exactly 10 years before, when Newcastle yachtsman Ivan Macfadyen had sailed exactly the same course from Melbourne to Osaka, all he'd had to do to catch a fish from the ocean between Brisbane and Japan was throw out a baited line ... But this time, on that whole long leg of sea journey, the total catch was two. No fish. No birds. Hardly a sign of life at all. (Link).

(Translation) Fishermen from Primorsko to the village are propishteli of empty nets ... do not remember such a thing in my life, and for decades to come off the sea. Fish suddenly disappeared - and bonito and bluefish, and mullet, and Zargana, everything.

And yesterday he came back with an empty boat, holding in his hand his only catch of the day - a plastic bag with 2.5 pounds of horse mackerel.

According to fishermen in Tsarevo reason lies in the platform for shale gas, which in the summer is 10ish miles offshore ... divers also told that the seabed in the area is covered with dead fish. (Link).

A $32-million commercial fishery has inexplicably and completely collapsed this year on the B.C. coast.

The sardine seine fleet has gone home after failing to catch a single fish. And the commercial disappearance of the small schooling fish is having repercussions all the way up the food chain to threatened humpback whales.

Humpbacks are telling us that something has changed ... Ocean systems are so complex, it's really hard to know what it means. For one year, I don't think there's any reason to be alarmed, but there is certainly reason to be curious. (Link).

Across North America, in places as far-flung as Montana and British Columbia, New Hampshire and Minnesota - moose populations are in steep decline. And no one is sure why.

Twenty years ago, Minnesota had two geographically separate moose populations. One of them has virtually disappeared since the 1990s, declining to fewer than 100 from 4,000.

The other population, in northeastern Minnesota, is dropping 25 percent a year and is now fewer than 3,000, down from 8,000. (The moose mortality rate used to be 8 percent to 12 percent a year.) As a result, wildlife officials have suspended all moose hunting. (Link).

The health of the world's oceans is deteriorating even faster than had previously been thought, a report says.

It says conditions are ripe for the sort of mass extinction event that has afflicted the oceans in the past. (Link).

The deadly fungus, which is rife across mainland Europe, is now out of control in the East and South East of England and there have been outbreaks in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The latest official figures reveal there are 571 infected sites in Britain, with 334 linked to imported ash trees, 213 in the wider environment and 24 in nurseries. (Link).

Twenty years ago you had to look pretty hard to find any occurrences of this disease, and now it's everywhere.

In recent years the white plague has killed 70-80 percent of some coral reefs.

Reports of non-bleaching coral disease have increased more than 50 times since 1965, and are contributing to declines in coral abundance and cover. (Link).

THIS IS A REPORT FROM 2008.

Dead zones are on the rise, says a new study that identified stark growth in the number of coastal areas where the water has too little oxygen to sustain marine life.

Diaz and co-author Rutger Rosenberg, of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, said in a press release that dead zones are now the key stressor on marine ecosystems and rank with overfishing, habitat loss, and harmful algal blooms as global environmental problems. (Link).

Aboriginal people in British Columbia who rely on Skeena River sockeye are facing some extremely difficult decisions as sockeye salmon returns plunge to historic lows.

Only 453,000 sockeye are expected to swim along the Skeena this year, Kotyk said, compared to approximately 2.4 million last year, forcing all commercial and recreational Skeena sockeye fisheries to be closed.

... We think something happened in the ocean ... We've never seen anything like this in all these years I've done this. I've asked the elders and they have never seen anything like this at all. (Link).

The day that we ran out of water I turned on my faucet and nothing was there and at that moment I knew the whole of Barnhart was down the tubes, she said, blinking back tears. I went: 'dear God help us'. That was the first thought that came to mind.

Three years of drought, decades of overuse and now the oil industry's outsize demands on water for fracking are running down reservoirs and underground aquifers.

Ranchers dumped most of their herds. Cotton farmers lost up to half their crops. The extra draw down, coupled with drought, made it impossible for local ranchers to feed and water their herds, said Buck Owens. In a good year, Owens used to run 500 cattle and up to 8,000 goats on his 7,689 leased hectares (19,000 acres). Now he's down to a few hundred goats. (Link).

The outcome of the meeting demonstrates that there are simply too many industrial fishing vessels plundering the Pacific, using highly destructive fishing techniques that have wide and damaging impacts on the ecosystem.

The Pacific region's most valuable tuna, the Pacific bluefin, is now down to just four per cent of its original stock size and other tuna stocks are at risk of following this catastrophic decline unless urgent management action is taken. (Link).

(NOTE: this has been translated) The last more than 10 years, bees are a large number of deaths worldwide, the number of bees are being phased out. Germany's colonies fell from 1.2 million in 1990 by nearly half. (Link).

Above-average occurrences of dolphins washing ashore dead or dying along the US East Coast has marine scientists concerned.

The Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center initially dismissed suggestions that the dolphin deaths were connected, but now it is reevaluating its position. We are a little bit concerned about it, the Virginia Aquarium's Mark Swingle told WAVY. It's definitely at a much higher level than we're used to seeing at this time of year. (Link).

Declines in birds across the globe are providing evidence of a rapid deterioration in the global environment that is affecting all life on earth - including people.

The status of the world's birds continues to get worse with many species slipping towards extinction and others in steep decline ... Birds provide an accurate and easy to read environmental barometer that allows us to see clearly the pressures our current way of life are putting on the world's biodiversity. (Link).

The rapid growth over the last few decades of these creatures is a sign of the planet's deteriorating marine health, according to expert Lisa-ann Gershwin. Gershwin says that these enchanting and lovely invertebrates are in fact harbingers of the health of the oceans. They're an indicator that something is out of balance, she told Bob McDonald, host of CBC Radio's Quirks & Quarks. So they're kind of the canaries in the coal mine, if you will. Except whereas a canary dies when something's wrong, jellyfish flourish when something's wrong. (Link).

The Atlantic puffin population is at risk in the United States, and there are signs the seabirds are in distress in other parts of the world. The survival rates of fledglings on Maine's two largest puffin colonies plunged last summer, and puffins are in declining health at the largest puffin colony in the Gulf, on a Canadian island about 10 miles off eastern Maine. There are enough signals suggesting that puffins and other seabirds could be in trouble, said Rebecca Holberton, a professor at the University of Maine who has studied puffins for years. (Link).

The State of Nature report, compiled by 25 wildlife organisations - from the RSPB to the British Lichen Society - collates assessments of 3,148 species. According to the document, reasons for the decline are many and varied but include rising temperatures and habitat degradation.
- Turtle doves have declined by 93% since 1970.
- Hedgehogs have declined by around a third since the millennium.
- The small tortoiseshell butterfly has declined in abundance by 77% in the last ten years.
- The early bumblebee (Bombus pratorum) and the tormentil mining bee (Andrena tarsata) have shown strong declines in range since 1970.
- The population size of the V-moth is estimated to be less than 1% of what it was in the 1960s.
- Corn cleavers has undergone one of the most dramatic declines of any plant species. (Link).

North Carolina: Biologists checking on bats that hibernate in mines and caves in the region were hoping against hope this year that a fungus killing bats in the Northeast might have traveled south without quite the lethal power. They have been disappointed. White-nose syndrome has claimed more than 90 percent of bats in three sites around the region, the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission announced this week, and has now been found in seven Western North Carolina counties. (Link).

Virginia: A mysterious disease that devastated bats in the Northeast is now turning Virginia caves into similar killing chambers, wiping out 89 to 99 percent of some populations. The grim figures, previously unreleased, come from a survey of 21 Virginia bat caves that scientists conducted from January to mid-March. (Link).

In moist, mossy rooms, rows of glass aquariums bathed in eerie light shelter the last of the last of the frogs. It is a secure facility, for here reside the sole survivors of their species, rescued from the wild before a modern plague swept through their forests and streams in a ferocious doomsday event that threatens the planet's amphibians with extinction.

The caretakers hope they will be able to encourage these finicky, exotic, mysterious captives to breed, and then return their progeny - somehow, someday, somewhere - to the wild. It is much harder than you might think. Because the thing that is killing the frogs is still out there.

In the pristine tropical forests of the world, the waters still run clear and clean, and the jungle is, as ever, a riot of green, grasping life. But something is missing. Where there was once a crazy cacophony of frog song, all day, all night, there is now a spooky quiet. The streams have gone silent. The frogs are gone. (Link).

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The fate of a major European ecosystem depends on populations of a tiny, mouse-like creature: the vole. Voles are close to the bottom of the food chain, and the fate of these animals tends to have a ripple effect on the rest of the ecosystem, said ecologist Xavier Lambin of the University of Aberdeen in the U.K. The shrinking of population booms will have a profound effect on vole predators, such as owls, kestrels, weasels and foxes, Lambin said. (Link).

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Bucks County's largest bat population has met a grim fate. Scientists have confirmed that nearly all of the 10,000 bats that have hibernated in an abandoned iron ore mine in Upper Bucks for generations have died.

Bucks County's bats were wiped out by a disease that has been killing bat colonies across the Northeast at an alarming rate in the last four years ... In Pennsylvania, 98 percent of cave-hibernating bats have died. (Link).

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The number of Monarch butterflies making it to their winter refuge in Mexico dropped 59 percent this year, falling to the lowest level since comparable record-keeping began 20 years ago, scientists reported.

It was the third straight year of declines for the orange-and-black butterflies that migrate from the United States and Canada ... The decline in the Monarch population now marks a statistical long-term trend and can no longer be seen as a combination of yearly or seasonal events, the experts said. (Link).

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The deadly and mysterious fungus has killed millions of bats since it was first observed in February 2006. The fungus has now been found in 22 US states and five Canadian provinces ... bat populations that contract the fungus have a 70 to 100 percent mortality rate. There is no known cure or treatment. (Link).

Forest elephant numbers have decreased by 62% across Central Africa over the last 10 years, according to a study ... The analysis confirmed fears that African forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) are heading for extinction, possibly within the next decade ... Although we were expecting to see these results, we were horrified that the decline over the period of a mere decade was over 60%, Dr Maisels told BBC Nature (Link).

SEABIRD populations in Scotland are continuing to fall dramatically, according to a new report published by Scottish Natural Heritage ... Over a 25-year period, they have seen a drop of more than 50 percent ... From 1986 to 2011, the numbers of seabirds breeding in Scotland dropped by around 53 per cent, continuing a downward trend over recent years ... The worst-hit species included the Arctic skua, down 74 percent, Arctic tern, which fell by 72 percent, and the black-legged kittiwake, down by 66 percent (Link).

A massive coral reef die-off is happening all over the world. In Australia, more than half of the Great Barrier Reef has died and disappeared during the past 27 years, according to a study by scientists. (Link). The Reef is under attack from a range of enemies including coral bleaching, increased severe storms, and ocean acidification, pollutant discharge from the land, coastal development, and damage from fishing. (Link)

In Hawaii, a mysterious coral die-off is prompting scientists to take a closer look at what may be killing large areas of coral reef (Link and Here).

The coral reefs in Northeastern Brazil are in an even worse state, with 80 percent over the past 50 years dying, due to "abusive extraction and pollution from urban and industrial sources", a report says. (Link)

The southern Carribean has experienced a collapse of its Sardine fisheries during the past 10 years. They have fallen by as much as 87 percent. Since 2005 plankton levels in the Caribbean have reduced significantly, which, coupled with overfishing, may have contributed to the collapse of these fisheries.

The Venezuelan sardine catch has dropped from about 200,000 tonnes in 2004 to less than 40,000 tonnes today (Link).

Global fish stocks are exploited or depleted to such an extent that without urgent measures, we may be the last generation to catch food from the oceans. Global Fish consumption has hit a record high and around 85 percent of global fish stocks are over-exploited, depleted or fully exploited. Large areas of the seabed resemble a desert. (Link. Also Here)

During the past 20 years in Australia, only about 5 Whale strandings were recorded per year. But there were 25 strandings recorded in 2011 alone, prompting a long term investigation into the health of the whale population. A lot of juvenile whales are found washed up on beaches, giving an indication that these animals are either starving or are diseased. (Link)

Almost everyday we are seeing reports from all around the world of whale and dolphin strandings and deaths, with mass strandings happening more frequently.

Adult Cod in the North Sea have been decimated and only around 100 over the age of 13 are left, raising concern over the future of Cod. A survey of catches at European ports has found that fishermen did not catch a single cod over the age of 13 last year (2011). This means that there are fewer eggs and larvae to perpetuate future generations. (Link)

New research suggests that the number of Sharks have fallen by 90 percent and could be heading for extinction, and yet millions are killed every year for asian delicacies. The more we study sharks, the worse the picture becomes, and the stronger the case becomes for conservation efforts. (Link)

And Sharks also play a vital role in the ecosystem of the seas. A study done by Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, is among the few to document the cascading effects that the loss of a top predator can have on a marine ecosystem. (Link)

North American freshwater fishes are going extinct at an alarming rate compared with other species. The rate of extinctions increased noticeably after 1950, although it has leveled off in the past decade. The number of extinct species has grown by 25 percent since 1989. At least 57 North American species and subspecies, and 3 unique populations, have gone extinct since 1898. (Link)

The Little Penguin population on Granite Island in Australia has gone from 1600 ten years ago to just 20 today and faces extinction. 160 little penguins have been found dead along South Australia's coastline in the past year. The full reasons for the decline remains a mystery and fears the colony will soon disappear altogether. (Link)

During past 20 years, 36% of Penguin Colony have been decimated due to lack of food. The birds depend on krill as their main source of their diet. The tiny shrimp-like creature attaches to chunks of ice in the Antarctic ocean. But as the ice melts, the krill population dwindles. (Link)

Penguins are telling us a story that we need to hear. They are particularly vulnerable to environmental changes, and at this time, 11 out of the 18 species are listed as Vulnerable or Endangered. (Link)

The first ever case of Cancer (Melanoma) in Fish has been discovered in the Great Barrier Reef, affecting 15% of the Fish there, which could be the harbinger of a human health crisis. The Great Barrier Reef is directly beneath a gaping hole in the Earth's ozone layer. And this is the first (disturbingly strong) evidence that fish are developing skin cancer from ultraviolet radiation outside of a research laboratory. (Link)

This world is a planet in crisis. During the past 40 years, the numbers of wildlife populations have plummeted by more than 30 percent. It comes in the face of record over-consumption of natural resources with serious implications for human health and well-being. (Link)

The Butterfly in the UK continues to decline with a 40% decline in numbers over the past few years. Butterfly Conservation has blamed the decline on last year's (2011) record-breaking cold summer, but also said there was a long-term and ongoing deterioration of suitable butterfly habitat across the countryside. (Link)

Disease continues to ravage bat, bee and amphibian populations, with many species at risk of extinction. It appears that many species are under an immense amount of stress, allowing opportunistic diseases to take hold. (Link)

It's amazing when you look at the number of Bee and Bat deaths over the past several years. 3 MILLION colonies of Bees have died off. And 6.7 MILLION Bats have died. And both Bees and Bats are vital in the production of many foods we eat.

Devastating declines in farmland birds have seen 300 million being wiped out over past 30 years, which is a 50 percent drop. In order to boost food production across Europe, the wholesale ripping up of hedgerows, draining of wetlands and ploughing over of meadows has robbed farmland birds of their homes and food. Numbers of linnets, turtle doves and lapwings have crashed as a result. (Link)

In the United Kingdom the Bird population has declined by 44 million since 1966. House sparrows were found to be among the worst hit, with numbers down by 20 million compared with the 1960's. (Link)

One-Fifth Of World's Invertebrate Species (earthworms to bees to butterflies to lobsters and beyond) face extinction. The scientists report that the creatures face a vast array of different threats, with mollusks suffering from pollution originating from agricultural sources and construction and crayfish facing threats from invasive species and illness. (Link)

As you can see, this world is dying and everything in it is dying too. Yes, death is a natural thing for all life on earth. But not at the rate we are seeing it today. Friends, we are living in the last days, soon to see the second coming of Christ Jesus. Mankind cannot save this planet, as it is already judged for destruction. So the only solution is to turn to the Lord Jesus, and put your trust in Him.