عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
Varieties

Australia Halts Logging for Koala Haven on Eastern Coast

A Koala at the San Francisco Zoo in San Francisco, California, USA, 15 August 2025. EPA/JOHN G. MABANGLO
A Koala at the San Francisco Zoo in San Francisco, California, USA, 15 August 2025. EPA/JOHN G. MABANGLO
TT
TT

Australia Halts Logging for Koala Haven on Eastern Coast

A Koala at the San Francisco Zoo in San Francisco, California, USA, 15 August 2025. EPA/JOHN G. MABANGLO
A Koala at the San Francisco Zoo in San Francisco, California, USA, 15 August 2025. EPA/JOHN G. MABANGLO

Australia halted logging in a large stretch of woodland on the country's eastern coast Sunday to create a retreat for koalas and save the local population from extinction.

The New South Wales government imposed a ban effective from Monday on logging across 176,000 hectares (435,000 acres) of forest on the state's north coast for a Great Koala National Park, hitting six timber mills and about 300 workers, AFP reported.

Without action, it warned that koalas in Australia's most populous state could die off by 2050.

Environmentalists say koala numbers in New South Wales have suffered a dramatic decline in recent decades due to deforestation, drought and bushfires.

"Koalas are at risk of extinction in the wild in NSW -- that's unthinkable. The Great Koala National Park is about turning that around," said New South Wales Premier Chris Minns.

"We've listened carefully and we're making sure workers, businesses and communities are supported every step of the way."

State officials contacted each affected mill, the government said in a statement, vowing to provide payments to cover workers' salaries and business costs while offering free access to training, financial, health and legal services.

The state government first announced the planned koala haven in 2023 but it only stopped logging in 8,400 hectares of forest. The plan was also criticized for not protecting trees immediately.

The Great Koala National Park will provide a refuge to more than 12,000 koalas, 36,000 greater gliders -- nocturnal marsupials with a membrane that lets them glide -- and more than 100 other threatened species, officials said.

The government said it would invest Aus$6 million (US$4 million) to support new tourism and small business opportunities in the area.

It also boosted funding to create the park by Aus$60 million -- in addition to Aus$80 million announced in 2023.

The koala park was hailed by environmentalists but criticized by unions for its impact on logging industry workers.

"Koala numbers in NSW crashed by more than half between 2000 and 2020 thanks to deforestation, drought, disease and devastating bushfires," said WWF-Australia chief executive Dermot O'Gorman.

"This park is a chance to turn this tragedy around and eventually lift koalas off the threatened species list by 2050," he added.

"These tall eucalypt forests are a climate refuge for koalas. Australia needs landscape-scale protected area networks like this to prepare for the possibility of 2.5 to three degrees of warming by the end of this century."

When connected with existing national parks, the koala haven would create a 476,000-hectare reserve, the state government said.

Unions said the koala reserve was far larger than the state government's own experts had advised, and it would hit local communities hard.

"This is not about being pro or anti koala," said Tony Callinan, New South Wales secretary of the Australian Workers Union.

"We all want to see koalas thrive. What we're against is the unnecessary destruction of an entire industry and the communities it supports when there is a science-based option that achieves both conservation and a viable timber industry."

Final creation of the koala park will depend on the federal government agreeing to assess it as a carbon project for improved management of native forest, the state said.

Australia's official national koala monitoring program estimates there are between 95,000 and 238,000 koalas in the eastern states of Queensland, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory.

Another 129,000 to 286,000 of the furry marsupials are estimated to be living in Victoria and South Australia.

Most Viewed

 
 
Varieties

Dinosaur Fossils in Brazil Reveal New Giant Species

An employee works at the excavation site where dinosaur bones were found in Davinopolis, Maranhao state, Brazil, April 28, 2021. Giovani de Toledo Viecili/Handout via REUTERS
An employee works at the excavation site where dinosaur bones were found in Davinopolis, Maranhao state, Brazil, April 28, 2021. Giovani de Toledo Viecili/Handout via REUTERS
TT
TT

Dinosaur Fossils in Brazil Reveal New Giant Species

An employee works at the excavation site where dinosaur bones were found in Davinopolis, Maranhao state, Brazil, April 28, 2021. Giovani de Toledo Viecili/Handout via REUTERS
An employee works at the excavation site where dinosaur bones were found in Davinopolis, Maranhao state, Brazil, April 28, 2021. Giovani de Toledo Viecili/Handout via REUTERS

Brazilian scientists have identified a new species of giant dinosaur with ties to a similar animal found in Spain, reinforcing knowledge that land routes once connected parts of South America, Africa and Europe about 120 million years ago.

Named Dasosaurus tocantinensis, the species is one of the biggest found in the South American country and was described this month in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology, Reuters reported.

The fossils were uncovered in 2021 at a site hosting infrastructure works near Davinopolis, in Brazil's northeastern state of Maranhao, and the research was led by Elver Mayer of the Federal University of the Sao Francisco Valley.

The remains include a femur measuring about 1.5 meters (59 inches), which helped researchers estimate the animal stretched roughly 20 meters long.

"As the excavation progressed over the days, we began to see the evidence of that huge bone, which is the femur," said Leonardo Kerber, a paleontologist at the Federal University of Santa Maria (UFSM) who contributed to the research.

"This indicates it was a very large dinosaur. Today we know Dasosaurus is among the biggest dinosaurs ever found in Brazil," he noted.

According to UFSM, analysis indicated the species is the closest known relative of Garumbatitan morellensis, a dinosaur described in Spain.

Their lineage was European and may have dispersed into what is now South America roughly 130 million years ago, likely via northern Africa, before the Atlantic fully opened, the university said.

Dasosaurus tocantinensis's name combines references to the region where the dinosaur was found, including the Tocantins River, a major waterway whose eastern margins lie near the fossil site.

Varieties

German Philosopher Jurgen Habermas Dies Age 96

German philosopher Professor Juergen Habermas makes a speech during the awards ceremony for the "Understanding and Tolerance" prize at the Jewish museum in Berlin, November 13, 2010. REUTERS/Odd Andersen/Pool/File Photo
German philosopher Professor Juergen Habermas makes a speech during the awards ceremony for the "Understanding and Tolerance" prize at the Jewish museum in Berlin, November 13, 2010. REUTERS/Odd Andersen/Pool/File Photo
TT
TT

German Philosopher Jurgen Habermas Dies Age 96

German philosopher Professor Juergen Habermas makes a speech during the awards ceremony for the "Understanding and Tolerance" prize at the Jewish museum in Berlin, November 13, 2010. REUTERS/Odd Andersen/Pool/File Photo
German philosopher Professor Juergen Habermas makes a speech during the awards ceremony for the "Understanding and Tolerance" prize at the Jewish museum in Berlin, November 13, 2010. REUTERS/Odd Andersen/Pool/File Photo

The German philosopher Jurgen Habermas has died, a spokesperson for his publishing house, Suhrkamp Verlag, told AFP on Saturday.

He died at the age of 96 in Starnberg, in southern Germany, she said, citing information from the family of the politically engaged theorist.

Habermas was considered the most influential German philosopher of his generation, involved in all the major postwar debates and seeing a united Europe, in his view, as the only remedy for the rise of nationalism, AFP reported.

In his later years, he devoted himself to promoting a federal European project and prevent the continent from falling, as it did in the 20th century, into nationalist rivalries.

Throughout his life, Habermas linked philosophy and politics, thought and action.

After serving as the voice of German student protest in the 1960s, he became its target thirty years later while warning of the risks of "left-wing fascism".

In 1989, he criticised the terms of German reunification, guided essentially by the demands of the market, and which made "the Deutsche mark its standard."

Born on June 18, 1929 in Duesseldorf, Habermas had been enrolled in the Hitler Youth, but he was too young to have taken an active part in the war. As a teenager, he was deeply marked by the collapse of Nazism.

Varieties

Research Reveals Decades-Long Silverpit Crater Triggered by Tsunami 40 Million Years Ago

A massive asteroid struck the North Sea millions of years ago (Getty)
A massive asteroid struck the North Sea millions of years ago (Getty)
TT
TT

Research Reveals Decades-Long Silverpit Crater Triggered by Tsunami 40 Million Years Ago

A massive asteroid struck the North Sea millions of years ago (Getty)
A massive asteroid struck the North Sea millions of years ago (Getty)

A long-running dispute about the origin of a North Sea crater has finally been settled, as new research finds a massive asteroid hit the water and triggered a towering tsunami millions of years ago.

Scientists have found that the Silverpit Crater – which lies around 700 meters beneath the southern North Sea seabed, roughly 80 miles off the coast of Yorkshire – was formed when an asteroid or comet struck the region roughly 43 to 46 million years ago, sparking a 330 feet tsunami.

Since geologists first identified the formation in 2002, the 3km-wide crater and its surrounding ring of circular faults spanning about 20 km have sparked intense debate, according to The Independent.

But researchers say their new study marks the clearest evidence yet that the structure is one of Earth’s rare impact craters.

This confirmation places it in the same category as well-known structures such as the Chicxulub Crater in Mexico, which is linked to the dinosaur mass extinction.

The team used computer modelling and analyzed newly available seismic imaging and microscopic geological samples taken from beneath the seabed.

Dr. Uisdean Nicholson, a sedimentologist in Heriot-Watt University’s School of Energy, Geoscience, Infrastructure and Society, who led the investigation, said: “New seismic imaging has given us an unprecedented look at the crater.”

He said samples from an oil well in the area also revealed rare ‘shocked’ quartz and feldspar crystals at the same depth as the crater floor.

“We were exceptionally lucky to find these – a real ‘needle-in-a-haystack’ effort. These prove the impact crater hypothesis beyond doubt, because they have a fabric that can only be created by extreme shock pressures,” said Nicholson.

The scientists say these microscopic minerals form only under the extreme pressures generated during asteroid impacts, providing strong confirmation of the event.

Early research proposed that the feature was created by a high-speed asteroid impact. Supporters of that idea pointed to its round shape, central peak, and surrounding concentric faults, which are often seen in known impact craters.

But other scientists suggested different explanations. Some proposed that underground salt movement distorted the rock layers and created the structure.

Others argued that volcanic activity may have caused the seabed to collapse.

In 2009, geologists even voted on the issue. According to a report in the December 2009 issue of Geoscientist magazine, most participants rejected the asteroid impact explanation at the time.

The latest findings, published in the journal Nature Communications and funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), now appear to overturn that conclusion.

Dr. Nicholson said: “Our evidence shows that a 160-meter-wide asteroid hit the seabed at a low angle from the west.”

“Within minutes, it created a 1.5 km high curtain of rock and water that then collapsed into the sea, creating a tsunami over 100 meters high.”

The impact would have produced a violent explosion at the seafloor and sent enormous waves spreading across the region.

Professor Gareth Collins, of Imperial College London, who attended the 2009 debate about the crater’s origin and contributed to the new research, said the researchers have “finally found the silver bullet” to end the debate.

He said: “I always thought that the impact hypothesis was the simplest explanation and most consistent with the observations.”

“It is very rewarding to have finally found the silver bullet. We can now get on with the exciting job of using the amazing new data to learn more about how impacts shape planets below the surface, which is really hard to do on other planets,” Collins added.

Dr. Nicholson also expressed his excitement about using the new findings for further research into asteroids.

“Silverpit is a rare and exceptionally preserved hypervelocity impact crater,” he said.

“These are rare because the Earth is such a dynamic planet – plate tectonics and erosion destroy almost all traces of most of these events.”