environnement

Bags and balloons: NGO documents plastic pollution choking sea life

Washington (AFP) - A dead manatee in Florida was found to have swallowed so many plastic bags they formed a cantaloupe-sized ball in its stomach, while a baby turtle had its intestines perforated by tiny plastic fragments.They are some of 1,800 marine mammals and turtles found to have ingested or been entangled by plastic along American coastlines since 2009, according to a report from conservation NGO Oceana published Thursday.The group's report attempts to describe the cumulative impact of plastic pollution on marine fauna in the United States in the last decade, despite growing recycling pr...

Prince William, in global TED event, urges climate solution by 2030

San Francisco (AFP) - Prince William issued an urgent plea Saturday for a global effort to resolve the climate crisis by the end of this decade so that "we won't have to sacrifice everything we enjoy."The prince was speaking as part of a free streamed TED event aimed at unifying people to face the threats of climate change. Speakers range from Pope Francis to actor Chris Hemsworth and former US vice president Al Gore.The remarks from William, the duke of Cambridge, came in a prerecorded 18-minute video, part of which was released early on YouTube."The shared goals of our generation are clear -...

Fire leaves destruction and uncertainty in Oregon town

Talent (United States) (AFP) - Eraida Rodas surveyed the burnt-out wreckage of the wooden house where she had lived for 12 years with her husband and four children.All that remained was the metal structure of the floor, the charred frame of a child's bicycle and small deer statues.An American flag which flew at the entrance was three-quarters burnt.The rest of Talent Mobile Estates -- a trailer park in Talent, Oregon of about 100 homes -- had mostly been swallowed by the so-called Almeda Fire, which raged for nearly a week, destroyed almost everything in its path, and killed three people. Only...

Oregon equestrian center becomes refuge for animals fleeing US fires

Boring (United States) (AFP) - An equestrian center in Oregon that opened its doors to horses displaced by raging forest fires soon found its stalls home to almost an entire farmyard -- including pigs, ducks, donkeys and even an ox.Last week, staff at the Mount Hood Center in Boring, east of Portland, offered refuge to owners and their horses fleeing the West Coast blazes that have torched an area roughly the size of the state of New Jersey and killed at least 35 people. In just a few hours each one of their 80 stalls had been filled, with desperate owners bringing in their horses, often from ...

Fires, fear and guns on America's wild West Coast

Estacada (Etats-Unis) (AFP) - "This is just stuff. We're gonna move on from it," says Margi Wyatt, holding back tears as she stares at her burned-out mobile home destroyed by one of the fires raging through the US state of Oregon.The 70-year-old fled 30 miles (50 kilometers) from her home to Estacada in Portland's southeast as the huge and still-uncontained Riverside Fire raced through.The blaze devastated the mobile home site, located on a wooded hill next to a road. All the properties in Wyatt's row were destroyed -- but homes just ten yards (ten meters) away were left unscathed.It is one of...