Rewilding & Conservation News and Discussions

[wjfox]

Greenpeace drops boulders in UK sea against ‘destructive’ fishing

Environmental campaigners say the boulders will make it impossible for fishing gear to be dragged along the seabed.

2 Sep 2022

Greenpeace UK has dropped 18 large boulders on the seabed in a marine conservation zone off the coast of southwest England to prevent “destructive” industrial fishing.

The environmental campaigners sailed to the western part of the English Channel between the UK and France, loaded with the boulders of Portland limestone, each weighing between 500 and 1,400kg (1,100 and 3,100 pounds).

The giant rocks were dropped on Thursday from its Arctic Sunrise research vessel in an area of the South West Deeps (East) Conservation Zone, which lies about 190 kilometres (120 miles) off Land’s End, the most westerly point of mainland England.

Greenpeace said on Friday that the boulders will make it impossible for bottom-towed fishing gear to be dragged along the seabed and devastate marine life there.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/2 ... ve-fishing

[erowind]

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[raklian]

They need to drop much more than 18 of them to make a real impact but that's a really good idea.

I just hope nothing is being crushed by those boulders falling on them. Maybe it's one of those situations few sacrifices is needed for the greater good?

[weatheriscool]

More than 1.1 million sea turtles poached over last three decades: study
https://phys.org/news/2022-09-million-s ... cades.html
by Arizona State University

One of the most serious threats to wildlife biodiversity, in addition to the climate crisis, is the illegal killing and trafficking of animals and plants. Despite many laws against the black-market wildlife trade, it is considered to be one of the most lucrative illicit industries in the world.

Animals, especially endangered and threatened species, are often exploited and sold for their pelts or used as medicine, aphrodisiacs, curios, food and spiritual artifacts.

In a new study published in Global Change Biology, Arizona State University researchers estimate that more than 1.1 million sea turtles have been illegally killed and, in some cases, trafficked between 1990 and 2020. Even with existing laws prohibiting their capture and use, as many as 44,000 sea turtles were exploited each year over the past decade in 65 countries or territories and in 44 of the world's 58 major sea turtle populations.

Despite the seemingly large number of poached turtles, the study shows that the reported illegal exploitation of sea turtles declined by approximately 28% over the last decade —something that surprised the researchers. They initially expected to see an overall increase in reported poaching.

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Norway Signs Deal with Indonesia to Curb Deforestation
by Lasse Sørensen
September 12 , 2022

Introduction:

(Courthouse News) — Things are going well for Indonesian rainforests lately.

The world’s largest archipelagic state has reduced its deforestation levels by almost 90% since the 2014-2015 forest year, which runs from Aug. 1 to July 31.

Indonesia has the third largest amount of rainforest in the world, hosting a great diversity of flora and animals. They include the iconic orangutan, whose name comes from Indonesian words meaning “person of the forest.”

The Indonesian government reported that 115.500 hectares (285,400 acres) of forest were cut down in 2019-2020, a drastic decrease from 1.09 million hectares (2.69 million acres) in 2014-2015. Deforestation reductions may have saved the country from millions of tons of carbon dioxide emissions, it said.

Norway wishes to contribute to the positive environmental results, which is why the Scandinavian country signed a partnership agreement to continue deforestation initiatives in Jakarta on Monday.

Read more here: https://www.courthousenews.com/norway- ... estation/

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Putting Sharks on the Map: A New Standard to Identify Important Habitats
September 13, 2022

Introduction:

(EurekAlert) To date, shark, ray, and chimaera species have not been sufficiently considered in the planning of marine protected areas. However, a publication in Frontiers in Marine Science by researchers from the IUCN SSC Shark Specialist Group, IUCN’s Ocean Team, and the IUCN Marine Mammal Protected Areas Taskforce have developed a new framework to fundamentally change how sharks are considered in the design of protected areas and therefore support the protection they desperately need in the face of extinction.

Ms Ciaran Hyde, Consultant to the IUCN Ocean Team, explained: “We still have so much to learn about many shark, ray, and chimaera species, but unfortunately several studies indicate that many protected areas are failing to adequately meet their needs. However, Important Shark and Ray Areas (ISRAs) will help to identify areas for these species using criteria which have been specifically designed to consider their biological and ecological needs.”

As apex predators, sharks provide many vital functions for maintaining a balanced ecosystem. Sharks shape fish communities, ensure a diversity of species, and even help our oceans sequester more carbon by maintaining seagrass meadows.

“Losing sharks, rays and chimaeras will not only affect the health of the entire ocean ecosystem, but also impact food security in many countries,” highlighted Lynn Sorrentino, IUCN Ocean Team Programme Officer.

Vulnerable to human threats

However, their apex status makes them more susceptible to anthropogenic threats. Many of these species are impacted by fishing, especially in tropical and coastal areas where large communities live along the coast and depend upon fish as their main source of protein.

Read more of the EurekAlert article here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/964278

Read the lengthy Frontiers in Marine Science article here: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10 ... 68853/full

[wjfox]

Modi: India PM reintroduces extinct cheetahs on birthday

7 hours ago

Cheetahs are set to roam in India for the first time since they were declared officially extinct in 1952.

A group of eight cats arrived from Namibia on the occasion of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's birthday on Saturday.

They will undergo a month-long quarantine before being released in a national park in central India.

Cheetahs formerly shared jungles with other big cats like lions and tigers but disappeared 70 years ago.

They are the world's fastest land animals, capable of reaching speeds of 70 miles (113km) an hour.

This is the first time a large carnivore is being moved from one continent to another and being reintroduced in the wild.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-62899981



Reuters

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World's Largest Flower Blooms in Non-natural Habitat for First Time
September 17, 2022

Entire article less photograph:

(Kyoto News) An endangered stinky lotus flower called Giant Padma, known as the largest flower in the world, has bloomed for the first time outside its natural habitat at an Indonesian botanical garden after centuries of conservation efforts, according to the National Research and Innovation Agency.

The flower with a diameter of 60 centimeters blossomed on Monday at the Bogor Botanical Gardens in the suburbs of Jakarta following efforts to conserve the species outside its natural habitat since its discovery in 1818. The flower's diameter can reach up to 150 centimeters.

The opening of one of several buds of Rafflesia arnoldii, the scientific name for the so-called corpse flower, known for its rotten stench when it blooms, capped 16 years of cultivating efforts by Sofi Mursidawati, a senior researcher at the facility.

The species was discovered in the forests of Bengkulu Province on Sumatra Island by a guide of British professor Joseph Arnold who joined an expedition of statesman and adventurer Stamford Raffles. The plant's name combines those of Raffles and Arnold.

See photo here: https://english.kyodonews.net/news/202 ... time.html

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Pando in Pieces: Understanding the New Breach in the World’s Largest Living Thing
September 19, 2022

Introduction:

(EurekAlert) It’s ancient, it’s massive, and it is faltering. The gargantuan aspen stand dubbed ‘Pando,’ located in south-central Utah, is more than 100 acres of quivering, genetically identical plant life, thought to be the largest living organism on earth (based on dry weight mass, 13 million pounds). What looks like a shimmering panorama of individual trees is actually a group of genetically identical stems with an immense shared root system.

Now, after a lifetime that may have stretched across millennia, the ‘trembling giant’ is beginning to break up, according to new research.
Paul Rogers, adjunct professor of ecology in the Quinney College of Natural Resources and director of the Western Aspen Alliance, completed the first comprehensive evaluation of Pando five years ago. It showed that browsing deer (and to a lesser degree cattle) were harming the stand—limiting growth of new aspen suckers and putting an effective expiration date on the colossal plant. As older trees aged-out, new aspen sprouts weren’t surviving voracious browsers to replace them. Pando was slowly dying.

In response to the threat, managers erected fencing around a section of the stand to keep grazing animals out, creating an experiment of sorts. Rogers recently returned to evaluate the strategy, and to do a well-check on the overall health of Pando. He reported his findings in the journal Conservation Science and Practice.

Pando seems to be taking three disparate ecological paths based on how the segments are managed, according to the research. Around 16 percent of the stand is adequately fenced to keep out browsing animals; new aspen suckers surviving those first tender years to establish into new trees. But across more than a third of the stand, fencing had fallen into disrepair and was only lately reinforced. Past browsing still has adverse impacts in this section; old and dying trees still outnumbering the young.

Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/964916

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Can Artificial Intelligence Save These Rare Eagles from Wind Turbines?
by Philip Oltermann
September 21, 2022

Introduction:

(Mother Jones) Small in size, sensitive of constitution and with only 130 breeding pairs surviving locally in the wild, the lesser spotted eagle of the Oder delta lives up to its name. In Germany, key questions over the country’s energy future hang on the question of whether artificial intelligence systems can do a better job of spotting the reclusive animal than birdwatchers do.

Lesser spotted eagles (named after the drop-shaped spots on their feathers) are fond of riding thermals over many of the flatlands earmarked for a mass expansion of onshore windfarms by a German government under pressure to compensate for a pending loss of nuclear power, coal plants and Russian gas.

Because lesser spotted eagles in mid-flight are unused to vertical obstacles, and keep their eyes focused on mice, lizard or frog-shaped prey below, conservationists say, they are known to occasionally collide with the rotor blades of wind turbines. German researchers list eight dead specimens found in the vicinity of windfarms since 2002, a small but not insignificant number given the species’ endangered status in the country.

A controversial reform of the federal nature conservation act, pushed through by Olaf Scholz’s coalition government earlier this summer, slashes red tape around building windfarms near nesting sites, but banks on AI-driven “anti-collision systems” as one way to minimize such accidents.

Software engineers in Colorado are feeding hundreds of thousands of images of the airborne clanga pomarine into an algorithm. Linked to a camera system perched atop a 10-meter tower, the trained-up neural networks of the US company IdentiFlight are expected to detect eagles approaching from a distance of up to 750 meters and electronically alert the turbine.

Read more here: https://www.motherjones.com/environmen ... hs-birds/

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Serendipity on the Shore
October 4, 2022

Introduction:

(EurekAlert) For marine ecologist Kyle Emery, it was just another day on the job. Surveying the beach and kelp forest at Arroyo Quemada with his trusty drone, he was conducting research at a Santa Barbara Coastal Long-Term Ecological Research (SBC LTER) site, where scientists regularly measure the productivity and condition of the giant kelp stands and the organisms that live among them.

Little did Emery know that a casual conversation with a trio of people strolling on the sand would result in a generous gift to the LTER and related kelp forest research.

“As I was surveying, a couple and their friend approached me and asked some questions about the project and what research is going on at the site, out in the kelp forest and on the beach,” recalled Emery, a UC Santa Barbara Ph.D. graduate turned NSF Ocean Sciences postdoctoral fellow now based at UCLA . Ever the friendly researcher with a knack for public engagement, Emery told them about the kelp beds and the creatures that rely on them and on the kelp wrack that washes onshore, as well as the mission of the LTER to understand kelp forest ecology.

“They were curious about the project in general, and they mentioned being interested, and if they could learn more and contribute,” Emery said. “I talk to people while doing fieldwork all the time, but rarely do I encounter folks interested in becoming more involved.”

The couple, it turns out, included Bradford Jones — co-founder of venture capital firm Redpoint Ventures — and his partner, Julie Black. Their contribution? A $3 million gift to establish the Santa Barbara Coastal Research Fund, an endowment created to support SBC LTER leadership, undergraduate scholars, graduate and postdoctoral fellows and program operations. The funds will also go toward expanding research at the LTER and related work at UCSB’s Marine Science Institute.

Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/966852

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We Need to Stop Thinking of Insects as ‘Creepy Crawlies’ and Recognise their Keystone Role in Ecosystems
October 25, 2022

Introduction:

(EurekAlert) We need to stop thinking of insects as creepy crawlies and focus on the huge benefits they bring to people and the natural environment, scientists say.

The widespread and deeply engrained cultural perception of insects as creepy crawlies is a key factor holding back the public’s appreciation of the role they play within ecosystems. This perception is in part reflected in government biodiversity policy inaction across the globe, they argue.

This point is among a range of actions highlighted as part of a new paper published in Ecology and Evolution produced by an international team of entomologists which outlines a ‘battle plan’ including steps needed to prevent further insect losses across the globe.

Led by Dr Philip Donkersley of Lancaster University and co-authored by scientists from the University of Hong Kong, the Czech Academy of Sciences and Harper Adams University, the paper is a call to action targeted at other entomologists to step up advocacy for insects.

Despite 30 years of intergovernmental reports highlighting biodiversity targets, global insect abundance, biomass and diversity continues to decline. The paper considers the lack of progress in protecting insects and why meaningful change has not happened.

Read more of the EurekAlert study here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/969068

For the detailed paper in Ecology and Evolution: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece3.9417

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Well, here is an angle to "rewilding" that I did not expect to see. At least not so soon in real time.

A Second Chance for The Sumatran Rhino?
November 10, 2022

Introduction:

(Eurasia Review) Malaysia’s last male Sumatran rhino, Kertam, died in 2019. Now, a team from the Max Delbrück Center has successfully grown stem cells and mini-brains from his skin cells. As they report in iScience, their goal is to create sperm cells that may help to save the endangered species from extinction.

The Sumatran rhinoceros was once found across large parts of East and Southeast Asia. Today, poaching and habitat destruction have decimated the population of the world’s smallest and most ancient rhino species, leaving only a few dozen individuals living in the rainforests of Sumatra and the Indonesian part of Borneo. As a result, mating encounters between males and females are increasingly rare.

The last of their kind in Malaysia

The Sumatran rhinoceros, which is the only surviving rhino species with hair, has been considered extinct in Malaysia since 2019 following the death of male Kertam and, just a few months later, female Iman. But a team of Berlin scientists led by Dr Vera Zywitza and Dr Sebastian Diecke, head of the Pluripotent Stem Cells Platform at the Max Delbrück Center in Berlin, are not content with this. They and their international partners have an ambitious goal: to turn skin cells taken from now deceased Sumatran rhinos into stem cells, from which they can then derive egg and sperm cells to be used in assisted reproduction – in this case, fertilization in the laboratory. The embryos bred in the petri dish, which will be the offspring of Kertam and other already deceased or infertile individuals, will be carried to term by surrogate rhino mothers.

In the scientific journal iScience, the team led by first author Zywitza and last author Diecke has now reported an initial success: they have generated induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells for short, from Kertam’s skin samples. These cells have two key advantages. First, they are able to divide infinitely and therefore never die; and second, they are able to transform into any cell type in the body. For their recently published study, the group has already grown brain organoids, also called “mini-brains,” from Kertam’s iPS cells.

Read more here: https://www.eurasiareview.com/10112022 ... an-rhino/

[erowind]

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[raklian]

Is it true that Giant Pandas are at risk of disappearing? I plan to do some research about it since I am a student at the university of biology and environmental protection. It is important to bring original information, so I would be thankful to collect data from this forum. Anyway, I don't get sad because I have ------link removed------- to avoid problems and be a student who is quiet about her work due to the free online plagiarism checker. However, I am waiting for your suggestions on the topic in DM.

So it was an advertisement bot for some plagerism checker this whole time. Here I was hoping you were some deep learning experiment or someone just having fun with an AI.

That's for catching that, Erowind. The bot has been banned.

[ººº]

Sildenafil 500g ----link removed-----

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Fifteen Ways to Reforest the Planet
November 14, 2022

Introduction:

(EurekAlert) Scientists are calling for a ‘decade of global action’ to reforest the planet, following the overnight publication of a themed international journal led by researchers from Australia’s University of the Sunshine Coast.

The landmark issue of the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions reveals the latest scientific advances in forest restoration with the aim of benefiting people as well as nature.

“This paves the way for evidence-based, on-the-ground action plans for the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration,” said Professor Andy Marshall of UniSC’s Forest Research Institute.

Professor Marshall said it was exciting to see the strong focus on forests at this week’s UN Climate Change Conference (COP27) underway in Egypt, with Australia joining world leaders in committing to halting forest loss and land degradation by 2030.

He said the recommendations in the new journal issue combined research findings with knowledge and experience from many countries.

Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/970883

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To Prevent the Next Pandemic, Restore Wildlife Habitats
November 16, 2022

Introduction:

(EurekAlert) ITHACA, N.Y. – Preserving and restoring natural habitats could prevent pathogens that originate in wildlife from spilling over into domesticated animals and humans, according to two new companion studies.

The research, based in Australia, found that when bats experience loss of winter habitat and food shortages in their natural settings, their populations splinter, and they excrete more virus. When populations break up, bats move near humans to agricultural and urban areas.

“Pathogen Spillover Driven by Rapid Changes in Bat Ecology,” published Nov. 16 in Nature and combines multiple datasets over 25 years. The data includes information on bat behavior, distributions, reproduction and food availability, along with records of climate, habitat loss and environmental conditions. The study predicts when Hendra virus – an often-fatal illness in humans – spills over from fruit bats to horses and then people.

The researchers found that in years when food was abundant in their natural habitats during winter months, bats emptied out of agricultural areas to feed in native forests, and away from human communities.

A second paper, “Ecological Conditions Predict the Intensity of Hendra Virus Excretion over Space and Time from Bat Reservoir Hosts,” published Oct. 30 in Ecology Letters, used data from the Nature study to reveal ecological conditions when bats excrete more or less virus.

Read more of the EurekAlert here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/971201

To read the Ecology Letters article: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epd ... /ele.14007

[weatheriscool]

Nevada toad in geothermal power fight gets endangered status
Source: AP

By SCOTT SONNER today

RENO, Nev. (AP) — A tiny Nevada toad at the center of a legal battle over a geothermal power project has officially been declared an endangered species, after U.S. wildlife officials temporarily listed it on a rarely used emergency basis last spring.

“This ruling makes final the listing of the Dixie Valley toad, ” the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said in a formal rule published Friday in the Federal Register.

The spectacled, quarter-sized amphibian “is currently at risk of extinction throughout its range primarily due to the approval and commencement of geothermal development,” the service said.

Other threats to the toad include groundwater pumping, agriculture, climate change, disease and predation from bullfrogs.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/technology-s ... m=HomePage