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Guernsey Post have annouced plans to issue a new stamp celebrating an endangered Bailiwick bird. The Meadow Pipit (Anthus pratensis), now classified as endangered in the Bailiwick of Guernsey, will feature on stamps as part of a collaboration with the WWF. Islanders may notice the new stamp on the front of their letters and parcels from the 15th February 2017. An attractive creature, the Meadow Pipit is a small, streaky, yellow-brown bird with pale legs, a long hind claw and white outer tail feather. It's high, piping call – a common upland sound – gives it its common name.

New EPA documents have finally put hard numbers to the use of neonicotinoid insecticides, which have quietly grown to dominate corn and soybean acreage in the U.S. over the past five to six years. Data on the usage of clothianidin (Poncho, from Bayer), thiamethoxam (Cruiser, from Syngenta) and imidacloprid (Gaucho, from Bayer and Valent USA) has been scarce in the past, in part because the EPA does not regulate seed treatments in the same way it does foliar or soil applications of the same chemicals. Now pollinator and aquatic risk assessments on three neonicotinoids released on Jan.

Birds are vanishing from indigenous forests, especially in the Eastern Cape, and mopane worms - a key part of life in Limpopo - are in significant decline. Separate academic studies have revealed the new threats to biodiversity caused by environmental changes and loss of habitat. A team from Stellenbosch University and the Department of Environmental Affairs, which analysed 25 years of citizen science data collected by the Southern African Bird Atlas Project, found that half the country's 57 forest-dwelling bird species are vanishing.

A survey of monarch butterflies overwintering in California shows that the population has not rebounded. Although the total number of monarchs counted this year was greater than last, the difference is due to a large increase in volunteer effort. Counts at major sites were down when compared to recent years. Volunteers with the Xerces Society’s Western Monarch Thanksgiving Count visited 253 sites and tallied a total of 298,464 monarchs—a fraction of the 1.2 million monarchs recorded in the late 1990s.

Fewer migratory birds visited the Naujan Lake National Park in Naujan town in Oriental Mindoro province last month, a recent bird census showed. From 10,821 birds recorded in 2016, only 6,932 from 36 species were recorded during the survey held last month by the NLNP-Asian Waterbird Census (AWC) team. “The cause of this decline is not yet clear but it could be due to several factors, including the unfavorable weather conditions over the past weeks,” Don Geoff Tabaranza, project development and resource manager of the Mindoro Biodiversity Conservation Foundation Inc.

In the final weeks and months of the Obama administration, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Pesticide Programs issued a flurry of reports on some of the country’s most widely used pesticides. Decisions made on the basis of these environmental and health assessments will likely determine the level of pesticide residue allowed on the food we eat. They will affect children’s neurological health and development, particularly in agricultural communities. They will determine how farmworkers are protected from pesticide exposures.

The Bay of Bengal’s basin contains some of the most populous regions of the earth. No less than a quarter of the world’s population is concentrated in the eight countries that border the bay. Approximately 200 million people live along the Bay of Bengal’s coasts and of these a major proportion are partially or wholly dependent on its fisheries. For the majority of those who depend on it, the Bay of Bengal can provide no more than a meagre living: 61% of India’s fisherfolk already live below the poverty line. Yet the numbers dependent on fisheries are only likely to grow in years to come.

The research, published in the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) journal Bird Study, looked at the breeding populations of three species of large gull; Herring Gull (Larus argentatus), Great Black-backed Gull (Larus marinus) and Lesser Black-backed Gull (Larus fuscus) on the Hebridean island of Canna, and the relationship between these gull populations and the fall in the quantity of fish landed in the nearby harbour of Mallaig. Between 1985 and 2000 an annual average of 13,726 tonnes of fish was landed in Mallaig. However, between 2007 and 2014 this had fallen to 4,456 tonnes.

Using a fully crossed experiment, the influence of dietary exposure to neonicotinoid insecticides (thiamethoxam and clothianidin) and/or the prevalent bumblebee parasite Crithidia bombi on hibernation survival and hibernation weight change of Bombus terrestris bumblebee queens was investigated. Both neonicotinoid and C. bombi exposures reduced hibernation success individually, but no additive or synergistic effects between the stressors were found.