A proposed highway through Georgia’s Black Sea wetlands and the introduction of hunting in national parks are raising concerns that Tbilisi’s focus on immediate economic gain could result in the destruction of natural treasures.
Deep in southwest Mongolia, in the arid shadow of the Altai Nuruu Mountains, a little-known bear ekes out a perilous existence. The Gobi Desert has a host of endangered wildlife, but today the Gobi bear -- a subspecies of the Brown bear known to scientists as Ursus arctos gobiensis -- is one of the most threatened animals in the world.
Telephone engineer Yilmaz Hakal remembers as a child catching fish as big as his forearm from the river running through Dilovasi, a town on the Asian coast of the Sea of Marmara. But these days, not much flows under the arches of its fine Ottoman bridge apart from garbage, rafts of white foam and the toxic runoff from factories.
MANGYSTAU, Kazakhstan -- Some 12-15 dead seals have washed up over the past week on the western Kazakh shore of the Caspian Sea, RFE/RL's Kazakh Service reports.
Erik Utebaliev, a local resident, told RFE/RL he found 10-12 dead Caspian seals of all ages, from full-grown adults to pups, on May 3 and three more on May 8.
Striking a balance between environmental worries and the need for foreign investment is proving difficult in Kyrgyzstan. Of late, investment has outweighed ecological concerns, but officials in Kara-Balta, an industrial town about two hours west of Bishkek, are calling for a reordering of priorities.
Georgia’s photogenic mountains, woodlands and coastlines are often featured in tourism ad campaigns, but environmentalists say a radical restructuring of the government’s leading environmental agency indicates that officials in Tbilisi are ready to trash the environment. Officials strenuously deny such allegations.
Inside a pulmonary ward for newborns in Ulaanbaatar’s bustling Maternity Hospital No. 3, Dr. Tungalag Lodon tends to a day-old infant just taken off his oxygen tubes. With relief, she notes progress in the little boy’s heartbeat. The prognosis for other patients with hypoxia -- a shortage of oxygen reaching the tissues -- is often grim.
Environmentalist groups claim a land-fill of pesticides suspected to have come from Soviet-era collective farms could be contaminating the ground and threatening two settlements only a few kilometers from the edge of the capital Yerevan.
Days after introducing a 90-day fishing moratorium for Armenia’s Lake Sevan, officials in Yerevan are now pushing for a long-term ban in a bid to revive the alpine lake’s dwindling fish population. But enforcing any ban may prove problematic, experts say.
Environmentalists in Armenia are opposing a uranium mine project, the development of which has been linked to the upcoming overhaul of the Metsamor power station.
