News bites: Calls grow to tap strategic reserves, mass extinction may be under way, and more

“It appears the fairing — the part of the rocket which covers the satellite on top of the launcher — did not separate properly.”

AFP — via the Discovery News site — reports on new research that suggests humans are causing species loss on a scale seen only a handful of times over hundreds of millions of years.

“Mankind may have unleashed the sixth known mass extinction in Earth’s history, according to a paper released on Wednesday by the science journal Nature,” it reports.

“Over the past 540 million years, five mega-wipeouts of species have occurred through naturally-induced events,” the piece adds.

“But the new threat is man-made, inflicted by habitation loss, over-hunting, over-fishing, the spread of germs and viruses and introduced species, and by climate change caused by fossil-fuel greenhouse gases, says the study.”

The Los Angeles Times reports on the fate of a green activist who gummed up the works at an oil-and-gas lease sale.

“A federal jury in Salt Lake City on Thursday convicted a 29-year-old environmental activist of two felonies for bidding for public lands being auctioned off to energy companies by the George W. Bush administration,” the paper reports.

“Tim DeChristopher won bids in December 2008 totaling $1.79 million for more than 22,000 acres near Arches and Canyonlands national parks that the administration was offering to lease for oil and gas exploration.”

“DeChristopher did not have the money, and he has said he bid in an attempt to delay or block the energy leases — or at least to drive the prices up.”

Reuters reports that legal wrangling over the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill continues.

“More than two decades after the Exxon Valdez supertanker struck a reef and unleashed the nation’s biggest tanker spill, a lingering legal dispute about the disaster heads back to court on Friday,” the report states.

The piece adds: “At issue in a U.S. District Court hearing in Anchorage is an unpaid $92 million claim by the U.S. Justice Department and the state of Alaska for what they consider long-term environmental damage unexpected at the time of the grounding.

“The claim was made five years ago under a special ‘reopener’ provision of the governments’ 1991 civil settlement with Exxon, in which the oil company paid $900 million.”