‘Mastermind’ Dawie Groenewald given fine of 2m rand or four-year jail term almost 16 years after arrest
Two traffickers of rhino horns have been sentenced by a South African court in what police said was the world’s largest such case, partly bringing to an end an almost two-decade legal saga.
Dawie Groenewald and Tielman Erasmus had faced more than 1,700 charges ranging from illegally hunting and dehorning rhinos to racketeering and money laundering.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
06/18/2026 - 11:15
06/18/2026 - 11:00
A prospecting company’s search for gold has the town of Lone Pine and Indigenous leaders on edge, as the Trump administration greenlights new projects across the American west
Lone Pine, population 1,882, lies along a stretch of California highway framed by the vast Inyo mountains and a sweeping desert landscape of sagebrush and dunes.
It’s the type of small town tourists drive through en route to Death Valley; where hikers get a motel room between Pacific Crest Trail treks. But amid the quiet downtown strip of bars and shops, there are signs of a battle brewing under the town’s sleepy surface.
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06/18/2026 - 10:00
Top 10% generate climate and biodiversity damage bill that exceeds economies of most countries, say researchers
The environmental damage bill racked up by the highest-consuming 10% of the world’s population has reached up to $5.7tn a year – larger than the economy of every country except the US and China, a study has found.
Mega-consumers in this group are concentrated in the global north, accounting for more than half the population of the US and 40-45% of people in the EU.
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06/18/2026 - 08:00
Federal agency to use herbicide to clear lands for replanting after 2021 Caldor fire – but public reaction to plan is fierce
Katherine Levy remembers a childhood deeply rooted in the natural offerings of Lake Tahoe – water-skiing in the summer and working as ski instructor on the surrounding snow-covered mountains during winter months.
After many years away, she recently moved back to live along the lake’s north shore. But she doesn’t like what she has found upon her return: a US government plan to spray multiple types of herbicides, including the cancer-linked glyphosate weedkiller – within national forest property that abuts the community’s cherished lake.
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06/16/2026 - 23:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 17 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s44183-026-00215-z
Global warming threatens to eradicate Earth’s tropical corals. As legal interventions addressing climate change expand, fossil fuel companies’ historical awareness of their products’ damaging effects is increasingly important. We searched historical documents using a large-language-model-based agent, finding that carbon majors were aware by the 1980s of prospective impacts of fossil fuels on corals from ocean acidification, marine heatwaves, sea-level rise, and intensified storms and later funded efforts downplaying such impacts.
06/16/2026 - 23:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 17 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s44183-026-00219-9
The future of global ocean observations: five scenarios
06/14/2026 - 23:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 15 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s44183-026-00208-y
Unprecedented Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Sustainability in the Blue Economy: A Perspective on Indian Policy
World Ocean Explorer Wins Gold Medal Serious Simulation Award from Serious Play Annual International Competition
10/26/2023 - 14:35
For Immediate Release October 19, 2023
Sedgwick, Maine USA World Ocean Explorer, a 3D virtual aquarium and educational simulation, was recently cited for excellence, winning a Gold Medal Award in the 2023 International Serious Play Awards Program.
World Ocean Explorer is an innovative 3D virtual aquarium designed for educational exploration of the world’s oceans. With interactive exhibits and a lobby space, visitors can immerse themselves in realistic marine environments, including a DEEP SEA exhibit funded by Schmidt Ocean Institute, showcasing unprecedented deep-sea discoveries off Australia. Targeted at 3rd graders and beyond, this immersive experience offers a range of perspectives on the ocean environment and can be explored through guided tours or user-controlled interfaces. Visit DEEP SEA at worldoceanexplorer.org/deep-sea-aquarium.html.
Serious Play Conference brings together professionals who are exploring the use of game-based learning, sharing their experience, and working together to shape the future of training and education. For more information on Serious Play Award Program visit seriousplayconf.com/international-serious-play-award-programs.
World Ocean Explorer is a transformative virtual aquarium designed to deepen understanding of the world ocean and amplify connection for young people worldwide. Organized around the principles of Ocean Literacy and the Next Gen Science Standards, World Ocean Explorer brings the wonder and knowledge of ocean species and systems to students in formal and informal classrooms, absolutely free to anyone with a good Internet connection. As an advocate for the ocean through communications, World Ocean Observatory believes there is no better investment in the future of the sustainable ocean than through a new approach to educational engagement that excites, informs, and motivates students to explore the wonders of our marine world and to understand the pervasive connection and implication for our future, inherent in the protection and conservation of all aspects of our ocean world.
World Ocean Explorer presents an astonishing 3-dimensional simulated aquarium visit, organized to reveal the wonders of undersea life, with layers of detailed data and information to augment the emotional connection made to the astonishing beauty and complexity of the dynamic ocean. Within each of the virtual exhibits, students visit exemplary theme-based sites with myriad opportunities to understand the larger perspectives of scientific knowledge as organized and visualized to dramatize the impact and change on ocean life as a result of natural and human-generated events. Through immersion among displays, mixed media and 3D models, the experience of an aquarium visit will be brought into classrooms or home school environments as a free, accessible, always available opportunity for teaching and learning. All of this will be available to a world audience without physical limitation or cost. World Ocean Explorer, a project of the World Ocean Observatory, receives support from the Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation, Visual Solutions Lab, the Climate Change Institute, the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, and The Fram Museum Oslo. To learn more about the current and future exhibits of World Ocean Explorer, visit worldoceanexplorer.org.
media contact
Trisha Badger, Managing Director, World Ocean Observatory | director@thew2o.net +12077011069
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