Category: Conservation

Categories
Biodiversity Conservation

When is a species extinct?

It may sound like a silly question but the world is a large and complex place. To this day, there are credible sightings of species thought to have been extinct for decades. So what determines is a species is, in fact, extinct?

From the Extinction entry on Britanica.com.  

How Do Scientists Decide a Species Has Gone Extinct?

Writing in The Scientist, Andy Carstens begins by detailing recent sightings of the near-mythical ivory-billed woodpecker, which was thought to have gone extinct in the 1930s. As a result of credible recent sightings by, among others, Mark A. Michaels of the National Aviary, US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) were convinced this past January to offer the bird a 6-month stay of execution. A ruling of “extinct” would have meant the removal of protections required under the US Endangered Species Act, such as preserving habitat and taking other steps to try to increase population size.

An ivory-billed woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) in 1932. Arthur A. Allen and The Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

The ongoing case highlights some of the challenges researchers face in determining whether a species has actually gone extinct. It’s “difficult to prove the absence of something,” says H. Resit Akçakaya, an ecologist at Stony Brook University, and so a lack of verifiable sightings is not necessarily evidence of extinction. According to guidelines issued by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), an organization that tracks species’ conservation statuses on the basis of surveys, modeling, and expert opinion, “A taxon is Extinct when there is no reasonable doubt that the last individual has died.” But researchers typically don’t know when or if that last death has occurred, Akçakaya adds.

The outline of a bird at the center of this photo, taken in Louisiana in 2021, is one of the pieces of evidence for the existence of the ivory-billed woodpecker cited in a preprint coauthored by ornithologist Mark Michaels.

There are perils on both sides of this equation. Continuing to classify an actually extinct species as endangered can lead to underestimating extinction rates, and obscuring the bigger conservation picture, as well as misdirecting financial resources away from protecting vulnerable species to searching for ones that no longer exist. On the other hand, declaring something extinct when it really isn’t can inflict further harm on a struggling species. Additional issues can arise if a species that’s been declared extinct is later found. Discovery of such a “Lazarus species” can cause the public to lose faith in scientists, according to Akçakaya, and may increase poaching demand in some cases.

To aid consequential extinction decisions, IUCN has developed a methodology to help scientists make the best use of available data, says Akçakaya, who also chairs the organization’s Standards and Petitions Committee as a volunteer. One approach uses so-called exhaustive surveys conducted throughout the species’ historic range during times and seasons when it’s expected to be present. The second estimates extinction probability based on the extent and severity of threats that a species faces. The methodology has value, according to Stuart Butchart, an ornithologist at BirdLife International who was one of the first scientists to test it. For the ivory-billed woodpecker, Butchart’s analysis estimated a 75% probability of extinction using the threat-based method, a result primarily due to habitat loss. From surveys and recorded sightings, the odds of its extinction were lower—around 20%.

Kelsey Neam, a conservationist with the nonprofit Re:wild, has tested IUCN’s framework on amphibians, although she hasn’t yet used it to recommend the extinction status of a species, in part due to the dearth of information. Lack of data is the biggest challenge for extinction declarations. Whatever the level of available data, decisions ultimately come down to the verdict of a jury of experts. As an assessment facilitator for IUCN’s Amphibian Specialist Group, Neam leads working groups of experts from particular regions in reviewing species’ status. “Sometimes it’s unanimous,” she says. “Everyone goes, ‘Of course, this is totally extinct.’ Other times, there’s a lot of debate.” Her job as an expert in using the IUCN criteria is to remain unbiased. “I often do feel like I’m the head juror,” she says. “It’s a lot of pressure.”

Tasmanian tiger extinction dated to late 1990s

Long considered a poster child for 20th Century species’ extinction, it turns out the Tasmanian tiger may have endured almost until the 21st Century!

Photograph is of the last captive Thylacine, taken on 19th December 1933 at the Hobart Zoo by zoologist David Fleay (image courtesy David Fleay trustees).

An international group of researchers led by the University of Tasmania has taken a fresh look into the disappearance, and conceivable reappearance, of the Tasmanian tiger thylacine. The last thylacine confirmed killed in the wild was in 1930, and the last specimen in captivity died at a Tasmanian zoo in 1936. Since then, sightings have regularly persisted across Tasmania, though no captured creatures or images have been offered to prove its survival.

With the possibility that the creature had persisted well past its addition and eventual removal from the endangered species list with an official designation of “extinct,” the researchers wanted to model the most likely last refuges of the iconic predator. In the paper, “Resolving when (and where) the Thylacine went extinct,” researchers modeled 1,237 reported sightings from 1910 to the present day.

For the study, published in Science of The Total Environment, researchers pulled from every available source: records from government archives, published reports, museum collections, newspaper articles, contemporary correspondence, private collections or other miscellaneous citations and testimony. The team even poured over microfilm records to compile their sighting database.

This resulted in median extinction dates of 1999 and 2008, with the most likely (overlapping) termination date by the late 1990s—a highly controversial result unless you are a Tasmanian tiger enthusiast hoping they may still be out there. However, when restricting data to physical specimens, the models indicated extinction by 1941. Looking at the data as a whole, the annual number of reports in the six decades spanning 1940 to1999 was relatively constant but fell substantially from 2000 to the present. This suggests the possibility of a small group of thylacine beating the odds of extinction by retreating to more remote areas, vanishing just a few years before smartphone cameras could have captured conclusive evidence.

Endangered vulture returns after being extinct for 36 years

Cinereous and Griffon Vultures feeding in the wild. Credit: Hristo Peshev, Fund for Wild Flora and Fauna

The Cinereous Vulture (Aegypius monachus)—also known as Black Vulture, Monk Vulture or Eurasian Black Vulture—is the largest bird of prey in Europe. Globally classified as Near Threatened, its populations in southern Europe, once abundant, have been experiencing a dramatic decline since the late 1800s. So dramatic, in fact, that by the mid-1900s, these birds had already been nowhere to be seen throughout most of their distributional range across the Old Continent. In Bulgaria, the species has been considered locally extinct since 1985. Thanks to the re-introduction initiative that was started in 2015 by three Bulgarian non-governmental organizations: the leading and oldest environmental protection NGO in Bulgaria: Green Balkans, the Fund for Wild Flora and Fauna and the Birds of Prey Protection Society, the species is now back in the country.

The re-introduction of the Cinereous Vulture is the latest in a series of conservation projects focused on birds of prey in Bulgaria. An article published in Biodiversity Data Journal details the process.

These animals went extinct in the wild. Scientists brought them back

Writing for CNN back in 2021, Rebecca Cairns details sixteen animals that were extirpated in the wild, then brought back from the brink of extinction in captivity and reintroduced to their former habitat. A rather gorgeous pictorial accompanied the article, and included such iconic species as: the Eurasian lynx, the Tasmanian devil, and the Steppe bison.

Hunted for its meat, hide and horns, the Arabian oryx disappeared from the wild in the 1970s but has since been reintroduced in Israel, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.

Personally, I would make a lousy adjudicator for the IUCN. I would always be inclined to believe that a species is still alive. The world becomes so much poorer when we lose even one!

From Getty Images.
Categories
Climate Change Conservation Water

2023 March World Water Day

In honour of World Water Day, which is today, I thought we’d review some recent articles about that most essential element for gardeners.

Major water-related events in 2022. Credit: Global Water Monitor 2022 Summary Report

Global water & climate change

A new report shows alarming changes in the entire global water cycle. Behind the changes expected under climate modelling scenarios, are troubling signs the entire global water cycle is changing. A research team led by Albert Van Dijk from Australian National University, analyses observations from more than 40, merged with data from thousands of weather and water monitoring stations on the ground. Drawing on those many terabytes of data, they paint a full picture of the water cycle over a year for the entire globe, as well as for individual countries. The findings are contained in a recently released report. The key conclusion? Earth’s water cycle is clearly changing. Globally, the air is getting hotter and drier, which means droughts and risky fire conditions are developing faster and more frequently.

A satellite image of Siberia Lena delta that flows in the Arctic Ocean. Credit: NASA

Why rivers matter for the global carbon cycle


Writing from École Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Rebecca Mosimann notes that, until recently, our understanding of the global carbon cycle was largely limited to the world’s oceans and terrestrial ecosystems. Tom Battin, who heads EPFL’s River Ecosystems Laboratory (RIVER), has now shed new light on the key role that river networks play in our changing world. These findings are outlined in a review article commissioned by and published in Nature. Writing with a dozen experts and using the most recent data, this work demonstrates the critical importance of river ecosystems for global carbon fluxes—integrating land, atmosphere and the oceans.

Image courtesy of Farooq Khan on Pexels.

Pollution & Water Treatment

When I was running the Canadian Environment Industry Association* in the late 1990s, one persistent problem with water treatment was removing pharmaceutical residues from drinking water. This has remained an issue for some classes of drugs but he last couple of decades have seen impressive advances. Prof. Dr. Juergen Kolb, an expert in environmental technologies at the Leibniz Institute for Plasma Science and Technology (INP), explains the current state of research. “We combine classical physical processes for wastewater purification with new technologies such as ultrasound, pulsed electric fields and plasma technology. This allows us to break down chemical compounds such as drug residues but also other man-made contaminants and convert them into harmless substances.” These methods have already proven their potential in various INP research projects. Currently, the approaches are being transferred to practice-relevant environments. “Our approach is currently mobile plants that can be used in hospitals, for example, where water contamination with pharmaceutical residues is particularly high. Particularly in view of the increasing number of antibiotic-resistant microorganisms, we see an acute need for action here,” Kolb adds. The technologies are also suitable for municipal sewage treatment plants as a fourth purification stage. The full article is titled: Innovative technologies to remove pharmaceutical residues from wastewater.

(CEIA no longer exists, but its Ontario provincial counterpart does. See Ontario Environment Industry Association.)

Image of a stormwater pond from the website of Kanata-South councillor Allan Hubley.

Living alongside the Ottawa River, stormwater management is a neighbourhood issue. Following flooding events in 2017 and 2019, the National Capital Commission has been busy rebuilding the retaining wall between us and the river. Sadly “green infrastructure” is not part of their engineering solution, which started instead with clear-cutting almost every tree along the river side of the wall.

Trees felled by NCC for “flood control” along the Ottawa River. Photo courtesy of Andrew Scott.

Green stormwater infrastructure

Writing in Phys.Org, Leslie Lee of Texas A&M University discusses green stormwater solutions to the stormwater runoff issues caused by growing populations, more hard surfaces from expanding cities, and climate change-driven extreme weather events. To help cities grow their stormwater management strategy portfolios, Texas A&M AgriLife Research and AgriLife Extension staff at the center in Dallas are working on many stormwater-related projects. The idea behind green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) is to take downstream effects of water management into consideration and to promote more rainwater to infiltrate the soil and replenish aquifers, rather than simply running off into the nearest body of surface water.

Although many U.S. cities have been slow to adopt, a research review published in WIREs Water proposes strategies for municipalities and decision-makers to overcome barriers and use green stormwater infrastructure for long-term benefits.

Image from New Phytologist, Volume: 238, Issue: 1, Pages: 33-54, First published: 23 January 2023, DOI: (10.1111/nph.18762).

How plants are inspiring new ways to extract value from wastewater

Scientists from The Australian National University (ANU) are drawing inspiration from plants to develop new techniques to separate and extract valuable minerals, metals and nutrients from resource-rich wastewater. The ANU researchers are adapting plant ‘membrane separation mechanisms’ so they can be embedded in new wastewater recycling technologies. This approach offers a sustainable solution to help manage the resources required for the world’s food, energy and water security by providing a way to harvest, recycle and reuse valuable metal, mineral and nutrient resources from liquid wastes. The research is published in New Phytologist.

Rain barrel at the side of Rebecca’s home. Photo by Jon Last.

Potential Contaminants in Residential Rain Barrel Water

In a new paper on ResearchGate, Linda Chalker Scott notes residential gardeners often use rain barrels to collect rainwater from roofs as a supplement to summer irrigation. Rainwater is a natural and unchlorinated water source for aquatic plants and animals. However, rooftop runoff can be contaminated by chemical and biological pollutants from atmospheric deposition, bird droppings, and the roofing material itself. This publication examines the state of knowledge on residential rain barrel water safety in North America over the last 20 years. Among the simple, research-based practices gardeners can use to take advantage of collected rainwater, while also reducing the risks of contamination exposure are:

  • Knowing your local pollution issues
  • Avoid collecting rainwater: when air quality is low (smoggy, temperature inversions, low wind speeds); if you have recently used a moss removal product on the roof; or if pesticides have been recently applied nearby.
  • Use good garden hygiene, including: keeping your barrels well sealed, and using mosquito netting on the top of them; not drinking rainwater or touching your wet hands to your mouth or eyes; washing your hands after handling rainwater; and cleaning the barrels regularly.
  • Wash garden produce before eating it.
  • Install a diverter for the first flush of rain to capture the worst of the contaminants.

Closer to Home

Photo from Ontario Parks website.

Ontario wetlands under threat

Angelica Marie Sanchez from University of Waterloo, quotes Dr. Rebecca Rooney, a wetland ecologist and professor in the Department of Biology. “Wetlands are a portfolio of ecosystem services: including flood prevention, breaking down pesticides, storing large amounts of carbon, and provide habitat for more than 32% of Ontario species at risk who rely on these wetlands to mitigate climate change.” Canada is home to 25% of the world’s wetlands. But according to Rooney, Canada has lost more than 60% of its wetlands over the years. In agricultural areas, wetlands have been drained to make space for farming. While in urban and suburban areas, Canada has lost the majority of its wetlands due to them being drained for housing development. Stormwater ponds are engineered solutions created to effectively replace wetlands across Ontario. However, these ponds only address some of the problems including flood prevention, but they need to provide the full portfolio of ecosystem services that wetlands provide.

While the More Homes Built Faster Act, formerly known as Bill 23, aims to address the housing crisis in Ontario, it will be devastating for the province’s wetlands. The proposals posted to the Environmental Registry of Ontario included changes to the Ontario Wetland Evaluation System, which is the instrument the provinces uses to determine whether a wetland gets classified as provincially significant. “… Unfortunately, the changes that are being proposed to the Ontario wetland evaluation system will dramatically undermine its efficacy and endanger wetlands across Ontario,” says Rooney. “There is a huge amount of scientific evidence that connects these pockets of wetlands into a whole integrated network,” says Rooney. “If you start chipping away at the wetlands and you destroy one piece of it, the whole network is going to suffer under the current proposals.”

Rooney encourages people to act by learning more about the act and its impact on Canada’s wetlands.

Aerial view of the Dezadeash River, Yukon, meandering through vegetated permafrost. (Photo credit: Alessandro Ielpi). Image from Stanford Earth Matters magazine.

Arctic river channels changing

A team of international researchers monitoring the impact of climate change on large rivers in Arctic Canada and Alaska determined that, as the region is sharply warming up, its rivers are not moving as scientists have expected. Dr. Alessandro Ielpi, an Assistant Professor with UBC Okanagan’s Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science, is a landscape scientist and lead author of a paper published in Nature Climate Change. Dr. Ielpi says the assumption of faster river channel migration owing to climate change has dominated the scientific community for decades. “But the assumption had never been verified against field observations,” he adds. To test this assumption, Dr. Ielpi and his team analyzed a collection of time-lapsed satellite images—stretching back more than 50 years. They compared more than a thousand kilometers of riverbanks from 10 Arctic rivers. “We found that large sinuous rivers with various degrees of permafrost distribution in their floodplains and catchments, display instead a peculiar range in migration rates,” says Dr. Ielpi. “Surprisingly, these rivers migrate at slower rates under warming temperatures.” One reason why is that warmer temperatures mean more vegetation, which helps to stabilize river banks.

Good News Stories

In 2004, frontyard lawns were prohibited for new subdivisions in the Las Vegas area. Above, the suburban community of Mountain’s Edge. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

How Las Vegas declared war on thirsty grass

Writing in the LA Times, Molly Hennessy-Fiske and Ian James report on how Las Vegas has emerged as a leader in water conservation, and some of its initiatives have spread to other cities and states that rely on the shrinking river. Its drive to get rid of grass in particular could reshape the look of landscapes in public and private spaces throughout the Southwest. In 2002, as the reservoir level dropped, the Southern Nevada Water Authority used more than its allocation of Colorado River water. At that point, the agency’s leaders decided to pivot quickly toward conservation. Cash rebates to encouraged residents to rip out lawns and put in landscaping with desert plants. In 2003, the Las Vegas area’s consumption of Colorado River water shrank more than 16%. Those conservation gains continued as the area’s water suppliers strengthened their rules, targeting grass. As the article details, not everyone is happy with the restrictions, but they are helping to conserve valuable water resources.

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Pexels.

Drought detection on the cheap

Meanwhile researchers at University of Barcelona recently published a study in the journal Trends in Plant Science that presents a set of techniques that enable researchers to detect and monitor drought stress in plants in a cheap, easy and quick way. The study responds to the need to establish effective and low-cost protocols to easily detect and study how droughts affect plants. Specifically, the authors present a battery of very accessible techniques that can be applied with basic laboratory equipment: precision balance, microscope, centrifuge, spectrophotometer, oven, camera and computer.

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

In other good news Everglades restoration moves closer to reality with a crucial groundbreaking. Elsewhere Albania’s ‘wild river’ now a national park.

Categories
Biodiversity Conservation Miscellany Phenology

The Sky at Night

Light pollution seems an odd thing for us to be worried about but a growing body of research suggests too much light at night can cause harm to plants, wildlife and even us humans.

Composite view of Earth at night from the Suomi NPP satellite in polar orbit 512 miles above the surface, from April 18, over nine days and for 13 days ending October 23, 2012. Source NASA-NOAA Satellite Reveals New Views of Earth at Night.

A good place to start our exploration is with Terri-Lee Reid’s blog post on the Canadian Wildlife Federation website. She notes that migratory birds are especially vulnerable to striking lit windows at night. All too often these widow strikes are fatal to the birds. So much so that Fatal Light Awareness Program (FLAP) Canada has developed a whole program to educate the public in general and building managers in particular. You’d think the opportunity to turn off lights at night and save money and birds would be an easy win-win. Sadly this is not always the case.

This long-exposure photo shows insects attracted to a streetlight. Photo by Nevit Dilmen/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Light pollution upending the natural world

Writing in The National Observer earlier this month, Sarah Scoles reviews Johan Eklöf’s new book “The Darkness Manifesto”. In the book, Eklöf describes an evening deep inside Malaysia’s Krau Wildlife Reserve. “One evening, during dinner, one of the film crew’s large lights was left on, directed up toward the sky,”. Lured into the tight column of illumination, a “heavy stream” of the forest’s winged inhabitants “danced in a spiral down toward the light,” he writes. According to Eklöf, this is known as the “vacuum cleaner effect,” and it’s just one way artificial light has a profound effect on the natural world.

The nocturnal illumination that sustains our modern existence seems to disrupt the lives, and circadian rhythms, not just of insects but of animals as varied as bats, birds, plants, turtles, coral, and clownfish (AKA Nemo). Eklöf, a bat researcher and self-proclaimed “friend of the darkness,” is concerned about the cascading ecological effects of what he and other experts call light pollution. In 42 short and digestible chapters, he makes the case that light pollution is a crucial feature of the Anthropocene Epoch. The seeds of light pollution were sowed more than 150 years ago. Artificial light, according to Eklöf, accounts for 10% of our energy use, but just a fraction is actually useful. “Badly directed and unnecessarily strong lights cause pollution that is equivalent to the carbon dioxide emissions of nearly 20 million cars,” he writes.

Scientific research into how light pollution has affected life on Earth is still relatively sparse but drops in insect populations are one example. “The reasons for insect death are many, from urbanization and global warming to the use of insecticides, large-scale farming, single-crop cultivation, and disappearing forests,” writes Eklöf. “But for anyone who’s ever seen an insect react to light, it is obvious that light pollution is a major cause.” Around half of insects are nocturnal and use the dark hours to feed and find reproductive partners. “The night’s limited light protects these insects, and the pale glow from stars and the moon is central for their navigation and hormonal systems,” Eklöf writes.

As for bats, they hunt nocturnal insects, of course, while using the cover of darkness to hide from predators. Particularly in Eklöf’s home country of Sweden,  bats live in church towers. In the 1980s, he writes, two-thirds of churches in southwest Sweden had their own personal bat colonies. But Eklöf’s own research suggests that number has dropped by a third. “The churches all glow like carnivals in the night,” he writes. “All the while the animals — who have for centuries found safety in the darkness of the church towers and who have for 70 million years made the night their abode — are slowly but surely vanishing from these places.”

Artificial light also disrupts humans. Most of us cannot see the stars at night, or the Northern Lights. Artificial light disrupts our bodies’ production of melatonin, the hormone that helps control the sleep cycle, with profound effects on our natural sleeping rhythm, writes Eklöf. “We may not be able to cure or prevent depression all at once by cutting down on electric lighting,” he maintains, “but we definitely increase the chances of good sleep in the long run.”

A fleet of Internet Star Link satellites in orbit above Earth. Scientists worry about their impact. Photo: Shutterstock

Satellite ‘Mega-Constellations’

Writing in Explorersweb, Andrew McLemore explores the conundrum: is it better to look up at the night sky or down at our phones? Driven by private companies, there is a movement to surround Earth with brightly lit machines. It is ostensibly about connection, bringing 5G cell service to every corner of the globe. Yet many scientists and astronomers have begun vocalizing their opposition to telecommunications networks that block our view of the final frontier. Light from satellites has begun interfering with the Hubble telescope, prompting astronomers to consider moving it further into space and away from the visual noise. Lovers of the outdoors want to preserve a natural view of the sky — uninterrupted by the streaks of satellites now more common than shooting stars. In a moving polemic published in the Ecological Citizen this month, scientist Kate McFarland made an environmental argument, positing that increased brightness at night could threaten delicate ecosystems throughout the planet. Unlike the light pollution of a metropolis like LA, the brightness created by satellites can’t be avoided by driving to the Nevada desert.

Two night scenes. On the left, stars fill the sky over the Coconino National Forest. (Credit: Coconino National Forest, U.S. Forest Service.) On the right, a dark sky covers a brightly-lit Los Angeles. (Credit Douglass Clem, CC BY-SA 3.0.)

Turning on the night sky

Writing in News Decoder, which aims at children and educators, Tira Shubart outlines the challenges of night-time lighting and how it interferes with the natural world and our view of the stars. At the end of this piece, she asks her young readers to look at local artificial lighting and how it impacts their neighbourhood and what they can see at night.

A comparison of sodium lights (on the left) and white LEDs (on the right). Author provided

LED streetlights

Writing in The Conversation, entomologist Douglas Boyes discussed how the predictable cycles of day and night have become increasingly blurred. Between 2012 and 2016, satellite measurements revealed that the global area polluted by artificial light grew by 2% each year, intruding ever deeper into biodiversity hotspots like tropical forests. In the UK, as in many other countries, older less efficient sodium street lights are being replaced by brighter and more energy efficient LED lighting.

This change in the colour of artificial light is predicted to have major consequences for wildlife. That’s because white LEDs emit light across the entire visible spectrum. The more wavelengths emitted, the greater the diversity of species and biological processes that are likely to be disrupted. For example, insects are known to be more sensitive to shorter, bluer wavelengths of light, which are largely absent from sodium lighting. Biological processes that are controlled by daylight and internal circadian rhythms, such as reproduction, are more likely to be disrupted or prevented by white LEDS.

To test this hypothesis, Boyes worked with a team of researchers from the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Newcastle University and Butterfly Conservation, I searched the Thames Valley area for roadsides with both lit and unlit habitats. Around 500 potential locations were whittled down to only those that were more or less identical – apart from the presence of street lighting.

The results, published in Science Advances, were striking. Lighting reduced the numbers of caterpillars by between one half and one third. Lit areas almost universally had lower numbers than their darker counterparts. Sites with white LEDs also had a steeper reduction in numbers compared to sites with sodium lamps. They suspect the reason there were fewer caterpillars in lit areas was because the lighting prevented females from laying eggs, a behaviour that has evolved in darkness. In addition, adult moths can be drawn up to streetlights, where they’re easy pickings for bats. Their recent review article revealed many other plausible mechanisms through which lighting could cause population declines throughout the moths’ life cycles.

I was saddened to learn that Dr. Boyes passed away shortly after this article was written. My deepest condolences to his family, friends and colleagues.

Ynys Enlli (Bardsey Island), north Wales has today (23.02.2023) received International Dark Sky Sanctuary certification by the International Dark Skies Association (IDA).STEVE PORTER

Europe’s First ‘Dark Sky Sanctuary’ is in Wales

To end this post on a more hopeful note, Jamie Carter, Senior Contributor at Forbes, writes about one of few places in the world where an immaculate dark sky is stuffed with stars while the night air is filled with spooky rasping screams. Just two miles long by half a mile wide, the island of Ynys Enlli two miles off the west coast of North Wales has been named an International Dark Sky Sanctuary—only the 17th in the world and the first in Europe—by the International Dark-Sky Association.

What we can do

The International Dark Sky Association recommends that we can take action, including:

  • Assessing the lighting around your home.
  • Using dark sky friendly lighting at your home and business.
  • Talking to your friends, family, and neighbors.
  • Spreading the word online!
  • Becoming a community scientist.
  • Advocating for a lighting ordinance in your town.
  • Visiting an International Dark Sky Place!
Categories
Climate Change Conservation Food & Agriculture Pollinators, Molluscs and Other Invertebrates

Ecological Agriculture

This is the second in a series of three blog posts where I explore the implications of two threats to our food supply – climate change and peak oil. Sometimes called ecological agriculture, eco-agriculture or regenerative agriculture, the idea is to grow food by working with, not against, nature. This type of agriculture typically uses more human resources and less technology while also sequestering more carbon in the soil.

Rodale Institute Farming Systems Trial

Perhaps one of the most significant studies on organic farming techniques was published over a decade ago by the Rodale Institute. The Farming Systems Trial was launched in 1981 with a clear goal: Address the barriers to the adoption of organic farming by farmers. For more than 40 years, the Farming Systems Trial (FST) at Rodale Institute has applied real-world practices and rigorous scientific analysis to document the different impacts of organic and conventional grain cropping systems. The scientific data gathered from this research has established that organic management matches or outperforms conventional agriculture in ways that benefit farmers and lays a strong foundation for designing and refining agricultural systems that can improve the health of people and the planet.

A bumblebee feeding from the flower of a faba bean. Credit: Nicole Beyer

Mixed crops provide ecological benefits

A recent experiment by researchers at the University of Göttingen investigated how a mixture of crops of fava beans (broad beans) and wheat would affect the number of pollinating insects. Somewhat surprisingly, they found that areas of mixed crops compared with areas of single crops are visited equally often by foraging bees. Their results were published in the journal Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment. This could be due to several reasons. However, the researchers noted, “Mixed cultivation of wheat and fava bean has also other advantages for crop production,” says Professor Catrin Westphal, Head of Functional Agrobiodiversity. For instance, yields per bean plant were higher in mixed crops than in pure cultures. “Cereal crops can be ecologically enhanced by adding legumes such as beans or lentils. This can make a valuable contribution to increasing the abundance of flowers on the arable land and thus counteracting pollinator decline,” concludes Haß.

The researchers mapped the geographical distribution of Berlin’s potential areas for urban gardening. Credit: Marion De Simone, Prajal Pradhan, Jürgen P. Kropp & Diego Rybski.

Berlin could produce more than 80% of its fresh vegetables locally

Berlin has enough space for urban gardening, and up to 82% of Berlin’s vegetable consumption could be produced locally, a new study finds. “The amount of vegetables represents a significant share of the annual consumption,” highlights Diego Rybski, an external faculty member from the Complexity Science Hub and a co-author of the paper that will appear in the April issue of Sustainable Cities and Society journal.

Image from USDA “Agriculture and Forestry: 5 Ways Agroforestry Can Work for You and Your Land” by Jocelyn Benjamin, USDA.

European farms mix things up to guard against food-supply shocks

An article by Ethan Bilby in Horizon, the EU Research and Innovation Magazine, reports that researchers are discovering the benefits of combining forestry and agricultural activities. The COVID-19 pandemic led to bare shelves in supermarkets as shipping routes were cut off. The war in Ukraine has affected the supply of essential grains. But increased climate change stands to cause even greater disruption. Researchers say part of the solution to mitigating that risk is for farms to become more mixed through some combination of crop cultivation, livestock production and forestry, a move that would also make agriculture more sustainable. For Dr Sara Burbi, assistant professor at Coventry University in the UK until December 2022 and now an independent researcher, COVID-19 was a wake-up call.

“Suddenly, we experienced first-hand what happens when value chains are not resilient to shocks and what happens when globalisation, with all its intricacies, does not work anymore,” she said. “We saw highly specialised farming systems fail when they over-relied on external inputs that they had no access to.”

Pilot farms across Europe are experimenting with combining crop and livestock production in one farm (mixed farming) and with pairing farming and forestry activities (agroforestry). Poultry grazing in orchards is an example of a mixed-farming approach. The results reveal interesting synergies and promising effects, including improvements in soil health. A combined system can increase the cycling of nutrients needed in the soil for crops to grow. It can also help to regulate air and water quality, prevent land degradation and even provide biomass and food on-site for livestock.

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Veganism may not save the planet

Vegans and vegetarians have long argued their approach to eating is the kindest—to animals and to our planet but new research from the University of Georgia suggests that might not actually be the case. The paper published in the Journal of Political Ecology (2022) found that a diet of mostly plants with local and humanely raised meat is likely the most ethical way to eat if we want to save the environment and protect human rights. “There’s nothing sustainable about this plant-based model,” said Amy Trauger, author of the study and a professor in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. For example, soybeans used in U.S. tofu and tempeh products aren’t grown in the U.S. They were largely imported from India, where soybean production contributes to widespread deforestation and habitat loss. Soybean plantations also take up valuable land space that could be used to ease food insecurity in the country instead. Then there’s the pollution and environmental impact from transporting soybeans all the way from India to the U.S. Similarly, palm oil, which is a vegan substitute for butter or lard, is mostly imported from countries where local ecosystems aren devastated by deforestation and loss of biodiversity as millions of hectares of forests are razed for palm oil production.

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash.

In contrast, animals raised in humane and natural systems can contribute to climate change mitigation. For instance, one pig can produce over 150 pounds of meat and 20 pounds of bacon. Raised on a pasture, outside in a forest with a diet of tree nuts, surplus milk and vegetable waste from nearby farms, that pig can also contribute to soil, forest and ecosystem health. When the time comes to harvest the animal, a small-scale processing plant that avoids plastics and employs well paid staff could be used to keep the supply chain short and transparent. That one pig could feed a family for months, Trauger argues.

A queen bee enjoys an agricultural pollinator habitat. Credit: Hannah Levenson.

Effort to help pollinators shows successes, limitations

Although not quite the bee’s knees, a three-year effort to conserve bee populations by introducing pollinator habitat in North Carolina agricultural areas showed some positive effects, as bee abundance and diversity increased in the studied areas. But results of a study examining the program’s effectiveness also showed that the quality of the habitat played a key role in these positive effects, and that habitat quality could be impacted by the way the areas are maintained over time. The research is published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.

Researchers visited 16 sites four times each year and caught bees in nets and in cups—called bee bowls—that were painted to mimic the UV reflection of flowers. In all, the researchers collected more than 16,000 bees from 128 different bee species. Results showed bee abundance increased over time, with more bees collected in 2018 than in 2016. Meanwhile, the diversity of species increased in 2017 and then dropped slightly in 2018, although both years showed large improvement over 2016. The study also showed, though, that the quality of flowers was a key driver of bee abundance and diversity, with areas of higher flower quality attracting more bees and more bee species. Poorly maintained areas with degraded flowers, weeds and grasses lagged behind in bee collection.

Male Bombus pensylvanicus on Rough blazingstar. Ellison Creek Sand Prairie Natural Area, Illinois USA. Photo by Angella Moorehouse.

The study turned up a few surprises. Although there were no squash plants, the areas attracted squash bees – an important specialist pollinator. “We also found a particular bumble bee—Bombus pensylvanicus—that is under review for potential addition to the endangered species list,” she added. “We found a high abundance of them, so it’s possible that they’re attracted to agricultural areas more than other areas. We submitted the data to Fish and Wildlife so it can be used to help make the decision on whether it should be listed as endangered or not.”

The researchers hope that further studies like this one can be performed in different types of habitats, like forests or urban areas, to capture a wider sense of bee populations in North Carolina.

Companies are eager to improve their measurement of carbon emissions captured in soil ahead of coming mandatory climate disclosure rules as they still largely rely on imperfect estimates. Photo: Phill Magakoe/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images.

Big food companies encourage regenerative agriculture

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Dieter Holger notes that soil holds the promise of capturing greenhouse-gas emissions to help slow global warming. Companies are now working to measure how soil stores carbon as they encourage farming techniques that reduce emissions across their sprawling supply chains. Improving soil health is a goal of so-called regenerative agriculture, which typically involves tilling less, growing more than one crop on the same land and using less synthetic fertilizer. Many farmers are hesitant to shift from established farming methods, but companies and governments are investing to educate them on the benefits. Regenerative practices can increase soil nutrients and yields while also absorbing carbon dioxide from the air, scientific studies say. Healthier soil could offset up to 15% of global fossil-fuel emissions, according to a 2004 study published in the journal Science. 

Many of the world’s biggest food companies, including General Mills Inc. and Nestlé SA, are working with farmers to promote the practices. However, determining the emissions captured in the soil still largely relies on imperfect estimates. Companies are eager to improve the measurement ahead of coming mandatory climate disclosure rules that are expected to require them to publish reliable information about their emissions and climate plans. The entire food-and-agriculture value chain—including processing, packaging, transport, waste and household cooking and refrigeration—contributed 31% of human-caused greenhouse-gas emissions in 2020, according to the United Nations.

Categories
Biodiversity Climate Change Conservation Gardening Pollinators, Molluscs and Other Invertebrates Sustainable Living

2023 February Conservation Update

In this post, a fascinating DNA sampling technique; conflicting news about human impact on animal populations; and a cute story about newt rescues in California. We also look at how rising temperatures due to climate change may damage animals; and a study that shows protected areas aren’t designed to protect invertebrates. It turns out we’ve been putting those anti-bird-strike decals on the wrong side of the window; and we look at where your plants come from.

Postcard-sized poo sample collection cards offer an affordable alternative to more cumbersome methods of collecting and storing the genetic information in dung. The cards do not need to be refrigerated and maintain viable DNA for months after collection. Credit: Fred Zwicky

Streamlined DNA for wildlife conservation

A team from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has come up with a new way of sampling DNA that allows scientists to capture genetic information from wildlife without disturbing the animals or putting their own safety in jeopardy. The protocol, tested on elephant dung, yielded enough DNA to sequence whole genomes not only of the elephants but also of the associated microbes, plants, parasites and other organisms—at a fraction of the cost of current approaches. The researchers report their findings in the journal Frontiers in Genetics.

A family of urban raccoons. Photo by Jon Last.

Can urban neighborhoods be both dense and green?

The British Ecological Society reports on a new study from The Nature Conservancy (TNC) that explores how we can make our cities work better for people and wildlife.  By analyzing existing approaches, as well as highlighting cities already creating the right balance of people and wildlife, the study pioneers an alternative method of city design that allows for the accommodation of both denser populations as well as wildlife. “This needn’t be a zero-sum game,” explains senior author and TNC lead scientist for nature-based solutions, Rob Mcdonald. “Having denser cities doesn’t automatically mean less space for nature.”

But, while animals may be able to co-exist happily with humans in urban areas, another study highlights how human incursions into natural areas can disturb wildlife.

Researchers placed camera traps along hiking trails in Glacier National Park during and after a COVID-19 closure. They found that 16 out of 22 mammal species changed the way they accessed areas when humans were present. Credit: Mammal Spatial Ecology and Conservation Lab, Washington State University

Human recreation changes wildlife behavior

Even without hunting rifles, humans appear to have a strong negative influence on the movement of wildlife. A study of Glacier National Park hiking trails during and after a COVID-19 closure adds evidence to the theory that humans can create a “landscape of fear” like other apex predators, changing how species use an area simply with their presence. Researchers found that when human hikers were present, 16 out of 22 mammal species, including predators and prey alike, changed where and when they accessed areas. Some completely abandoned places they previously used, others used them less frequently, and some shifted to more nocturnal activities to avoid humans. The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports. The researchers had also expected to find an effect known as “human shielding,” when human presence causes large predators to avoid an area, providing opportunity for smaller predators and perhaps some prey species to use an area more frequently. In this case, they found this potential effect for only one species, red fox. The foxes were more present on and near trails when the park was open–perhaps because their competitors, coyotes, avoided those areas when humans were around. While the influence of low-impact recreation is concerning, the researchers emphasized that more research is needed to determine if it has negative effects on the species’ survival.

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Animals at risk from heat waves

More than 40% of all land vertebrates may be subjected to extreme heat events by 2099 under current maximum estimates of future global temperatures, according to a study published in Nature. Prolonged exposure to high temperatures could be dangerous for the future of many species across the globe. Extreme thermal events, a period in which the temperature greatly exceeds a historical threshold, have increased in frequency compared to historical records, exacerbated by climate change caused by human activity. Recurring periods of extreme heat affect wildlife and are associated with increased psychological stress, reduced reproductive output and decreased population sizes, meaning that the continuation of these temperature spikes would pose a substantial threat to future biodiversity.

A ‘Big Night’ for Newts

The New York Times has a heart-warming story about the heroic work of the northern California Chileno Valley Newt Brigade in rescuing amphibians that might otherwise become roadkill as they cross a road from their breeding grounds and their burrows. But newt rescue is just a short-term solution. The group is also fundraising for road modifications that will allow the newts to pass safely underneath.

Black swallowtail on thistle at New Life Retreat. Photo by Carol English.

Protected areas fail insect species

Insects play crucial roles in almost every ecosystem—they pollinate more than 80% of plants and are a major source of food for thousands of vertebrate species—but insect populations are collapsing around the globe, and they continue to be overlooked by conservation efforts. Protected areas can safeguard threatened species but only if these threatened species actually live within the areas we protect. A new study in the journal One Earth found that 76% of insect species are not adequately covered by protected areas.

Northern cardinal. Photo by Jon Last.

What we know about bird window strikes is inside-out

New research from William & Mary published in PeerJ reveals that decals intended to reduce incidents of bird window strikes—one of the largest human-made causes of bird mortality—are only effective if decals are placed on the outside of the window. Researchers found that the patterns on the films and decals placed on the internal surface of windows do not reduce collision because they may not be sufficiently visible to birds.

A fynbos bouquet from South Africa. Credit: Juan Pablo Moreiras/Fauna & Flora

Where do your plants come from?

Tim Knight of Fauna and Flora International asks if we ever ask ourselves where all our garden plants come from? The local garden center or superstore isn’t the answer. Take bulbs, for instance. There’s a common understanding that most bulbs come from The Netherlands. In fact, most wild tulips hail from the mountainous regions of Central Asia. Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan—countries not widely recognized as havens of biodiversity—harbor the lion’s share of species. Turkey is also one of the richest areas in the world for bulbs, including familiar garden favorites such as snowdrops, crocuses, cyclamens and, yes, tulips too. It’s easy to forget that these wild relatives are the original source of the endless varieties and hybrid forms that grace our gardens and fill our flower vases. And that they face a variety of threats, from overharvesting and habitat loss to climate change.

Houseplants come from all over, including the popular Monstera, which is an epiphyte, growing on trees in its native South America. With one notable exception, bromeliads are found only in Central and South America. A single species—endangered and known only from Guinea—occurs in West Africa. Most bromeliads are also epiphytes, but the one that we’re most familiar with—though you may not think of it as a bromeliad—grows on the ground and produces one of our most popular tropical fruits, the pineapple.

White Christmas cactus. Photo by R. Last.

Cacti may be famous for their tolerance of extreme heat and drought—and plummeting temperatures at night—but they’re not confined to hotspots like the American Midwest and Mexico. Of the roughly 2,500 species of cactus in the world, quite a few thrive in rainforests or cooler climes. The Christmas cactus is native to damp forest in the coastal mountains of Brazil.

The article goes on to detail the origins of orchids (pretty much from every continent, except Antarctica); where cut flowers come from; and what makes the fynbos in South Africa so special. Mr. Knight concludes by urging gardeners to pay attention to the origins of plants they purchase and avoid those that come from unsustainable sources.

Categories
Biodiversity Conservation

2023 February Rewilding

Rewilding came to the fore in 2022, with projects happening across the globe. Illustration: Valero Doval/The Guardian

2022: The year rewilding went mainstream

The Guardian’s biodiversity editor, Max Benato, writes that COP15’s long-awaited agreement is by no means the only good news for Nature to emerge from 2022. Away from Cop15, rewilding came to the fore in 2022, with projects across the globe, from the reintroduction of bison and cluster rewilding in the UK to big ambitions in Argentina, lessons learned in the Netherlands and the US, and the 10th Rewilding Europe project launched. As we enter 2023, many are gaining inspiration from the past, with an uptick in regenerative farming, the return of ancient crops such as buckwheat and Welsh oats, and the harnessing of ancient irrigation systems. Others are looking forward, taking innovate steps in conservation, including collecting fog, turning bus stops into homes for pollinators and utilising artificial intelligence.

Yale University wildlife biologist Nyeema Harris examines equipment used to trace movements of animals in O’Hair Park, on Oct. 8, 2022, in Detroit. Harris and colleagues have placed trail cameras in woodsy sections of 25 city parks for the past five years. With many types of wildlife struggling to survive and their living space shrinking, some are finding their way to big cities. Credit: AP Photo/John Flesher

Extinctions, shrinking habitat spur ‘rewilding’ in cities

In a bustling metro area of 4.3 million people, Yale University wildlife biologist Nyeema Harris ventures into isolated thickets to study Detroit’s most elusive residents—coyotes, foxes, raccoons and skunks among them. Harris and colleagues have placed trail cameras in woodsy sections of 25 city parks for the past five years. They’ve recorded thousands of images of animals that emerge mostly at night to roam and forage, revealing a wild side many locals might not know exists. Reports that up to a million animal species are at risk of extinction has driven the rewilding movement.  Rewilding generally means reviving natural systems in degraded locations—sometimes with a helping hand. That might mean removing dams, building tunnels to reconnect migration pathways severed by roads, or reintroducing predators such as wolves to help balance ecosystems. But after initial assists, there’s little human involvement. The idea might seem best suited to remote areas where nature is freer to heal without interference. But rewilding also happens in some of the world’s biggest urban centers, as people find mutually beneficial ways to coexist with nature.

A great egret flies above a great blue heron in a wetland inside the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge in Trenton, Mich., on Oct. 7, 2022. The refuge consists of 30 parcels totaling 6,200 acres (2,509 hectares), including islands, wetlands and former industrial sites. It is an example of rewilding, which generally means reviving natural systems in degraded locations. Credit: AP Photo/Carlos Osorio

Urban rewilding can’t return landscapes to pre-settlement times and doesn’t try, said Marie Law Adams, a Northeastern University associate professor of architecture. Instead, the aim is to encourage natural processes that serve people and wildlife by increasing tree cover to ease summer heat, storing carbon and hosting more animals. Or installing surface channels called bio-swales that filter rainwater runoff from parking lots instead of letting it contaminate creeks. Detroit’s sprawling metro area illustrates how human actions can boost rewilding, intentionally or not. Hundreds of thousands of houses and other structures were abandoned as the struggling city’s population fell more than 60% since the 1950s. Many were razed, leaving vacant tracts that plants and animals have occupied. Nonprofit groups have planted trees, community gardens and pollinator-friendly shrubs. Conservation projects reintroduced ospreys and peregrine falcons. Bald eagles found their way back as bans on DDT and other pesticides helped expand their range nationwide. Anti-pollution laws and government-funded cleanups made nearby rivers more hospitable to sturgeon, whitefish, beavers and native plants, such as wild celery.

“Detroit is a stellar example of urban rewilding, ” said John Hartig, a lake scientist at the nearby University of Windsor and former head of the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge. “It’s been more organic than strategic. We created the conditions, things got better environmentally, and the native species came back.”

The foregoing is excerpted from © 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Summary of action points toward more equitable and effective ecosystem restoration. Credit: BioScience (2022). DOI: 10.1093/biosci/biac099

How social considerations improve the equity and effectiveness of ecosystem restoration

The United Nations Biodiversity Conference in Montreal closed this past December with an unprecedented agreement to place 30% of global degraded landscapes under protection by 2030, especially emphasizing the need to respect indigenous and local communities rights in the process. Conservation efforts to date have fallen short and have been driven by insights from ecologists, especially by mapping studies outlining potential of restoration across scales. While these studies have been important, they often overlook the human element. In a recent study, published in BioScience, colleagues and I show how areas identified by other scholars to be of highest restoration priority around the world are inhabited by more than a billion people who disproportionately belong to groups with below-average health outcomes, education levels, and income. These people are in many cases directly dependent on their landscape for food security, and often have strong cultural ties to their lands. Current restoration often takes place in the context of strong power imbalances and objectives may vary depending on whom you ask. Land-use policies driven by actors in the Global North but implemented in the Global South have a burdensome track-record of increasing marginalization of local communities. Beyond ethical reasoning, restoration projects will be more likely to sustain, and thereby to realize ecological objectives, if they align with local communities’ desires for their landscapes. People are simply more likely to maintain a participative restoration project that benefits them.