Conservationists Propose Federal Protections for Oregon Newt by Alanna Mayham
November 16, 2023
Introduction:
PORTLAND, Ore. (Courthouse News) — Environmentalists petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Thursday to conserve a dwindling subspecies of newt in Oregon’s Crater Lake through the Endangered Species Act.
The petition from the Center for Biological Diversity seeks federal protections for the Crater Lake or Mazama newt, a unique amphibian subspecies only found within the crystal-clear waters of the deepest lake in the United States.
The center contends that the Crater Lake newt has declined drastically due to compounding consequences of climate change and the introduction of predatory, non-native species. This is particularly true for the lake’s crayfish population — first introduced to the lake in 1915 to feed non-native fish — which have since grown to occupy 95% of the lake’s shoreline due to increasing water temperatures.
But the crayfish don’t only prey on newts, the center argues, explaining that the non-native species also feasts on the lake’s native plankton-consuming invertebrates. As such, the growing crayfish population not only competes with the newts for food, but it will inevitably increase algae growth in the famously clear lake housed inside the caldera of a collapsed volcano.
“These little newts have flourished in Crater Lake for thousands of years, and we have a responsibility to ensure they remain part of its ecosystem for generations to come,” said center attorney Chelsea Stewart-Fusek in a statement. “Losing the lake’s top native aquatic predator would mean losing a part of what makes Crater Lake so special to Oregonians and to the world. And losing them to introduced species and climate change illustrates how quickly our short-sighted actions can devastate our planet’s biodiversity.”
Scientists Relaunch Campaign to Save the Endangered Axolotl by Olivia Rosane
November 25, 2023
Introduction:
(Common Dreams) Ecologists in Mexico relaunched a campaign Thursday to protect the axolotl, an iconic Mexican underwater salamander threatened with extinction.
The Adoptaxolotl 2024 campaign invites donors to adopt a threatened salamander for around 600 pesos, or $35, The Associated Press reported. A virtual adoption comes with regular updates on the amphibian's well-being. Axolotl lovers can also buy one of the salamanders a dinner or purchase axolotl-themed t-shirts, bandannas, and mugs.
"The axolotl is at critical risk of extinction," Luis Zambrano González, who works at the Biology Institute of Mexico's National Autonomous University (UNAM), told the UNAM Gazette. "For this reason we need to understand its conservation as something that all of society is responsible for, to care for its habitat and develop strategies to allow people to relate more to these animals."
There are 18 different species of axolotls in Mexico, and nearly all of them are considered critically endangered, according to AP. The salamander is famous for its unique appearance, as well as its ability to grow back severed limbs. Scientists believe that studying the axolotls' ability may help them to repair tissue damage or aid in cancer recovery, but they will have to work fast to uncover their secrets.
Zambrano told the UNAM Gazette that axolotl numbers had rapidly declined in surveys: from 6,000 per square kilometer in 1998 to 36 in 2014, a decline of 99.5% in less than two decades.
How Can Europe Restore Its Nature? December 14, 2023
Introduction:
(Eurekalert) The ‘Nature Restoration Law’ (NRL) requires member states of the EU to implement restoration measures on at least 20 per cent of land and marine areas by 2030, and in all ecosystems in need of restoration by 2050. This includes specific targets to rewet peatlands and to increase pollinator populations. The NRL has already overcome various hurdles: most recently, it was approved by the EU Parliament’s Environment Committee, after delegations of the Parliament and the Council negotiated the final text.
But will the regulation really achieve its aims? The authors, including scientists leading large European projects on nature restoration and biodiversity, analysed experiences with other European environmental directives and policies, and evaluated the prospects of the NRL to be successful.
“The NRL avoids several pitfalls that often obstruct the implementation of European policies and regulations, showing that the Commission learned from past experiences” says Prof. Dr Daniel Hering from the University of Duisburg-Essen, first author of the study. “The regulation sets ambitious targets and timelines, and implementation steps are clearly laid out. It also saves time as it does not need to be transposed into national law.” At the same time, national implementation will be crucial for the NRL’s success. “While targets are precisely defined and binding, the steps to achieve them need to be decided by individual European countries and most of them are voluntary” says Prof. Dr Josef Settele from Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), one of the study’s authors.
Key to the implementation will be the cooperation of nature restoration with land users, in particular with agriculture. “Intensive agriculture is still a key driver for biodiversity loss in Europe”, says senior author Dr Guy Pe’er. “But targets for agriculture and nature restoration could be coordinated, with opportunities for both”. Agriculture directly benefits from healthy soils and pollinator populations and from increased water storage capacity in the landscape that are all targets of the NRL.
The authors conclude that funds provided by the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy need to be used for achieving the NRL’s aims: a statement to be intensively debated in science and application.
Federal judge denies cattle industry's request to temporarily halt wolf reintroduction in Colorado
Source: AP
By JESSE BEDAYN
Updated 8:48 PM CST, December 15, 2023
DENVER (AP) — A federal judge has allowed the reintroduction of gray wolves in Colorado to move forward in the coming days by denying a request Friday from the state’s cattle industry for a temporary delay in the predators’ release.
While the lawsuit will continue, Judge Regina Rodriguez’s ruling allows Colorado to proceed with its plan to find, capture and transport up to 10 wolves from Oregon starting Sunday. The deadline to put paws on the ground under the voter-approved initiative is December 31.
The lawsuit from the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association and The Gunnison County Stockgrowers’ Association alleges that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service failed to adequately review the potential impacts of Colorado’s plan to release up to 50 wolves in Colorado over the next several years.
The groups argued that the inevitable wolf attacks on livestock would come at significant cost to ranchers, the industry that helps drive the local economies where wolves would be released.
The Wolverine and the Waitlist by Jackie Flynn Mogensen
December 20, 2023
Introduction:
(Mother Jones) For one species of snow-dwelling weasel, Christmas came early this year. After nearly 30 years of waiting, the North American wolverine will be listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, the Biden administration said in late November, citing habitat fragmentation and the “increasing impacts” of climate change.
Conservationists applauded the decision—which allows the government to step in to help the wolverine recover—but with more of a slow clap than a roaring ovation. Environmental groups had originally brought the wolverine’s decline to the attention of the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) as early as 1994, but the agency flip-flopped on its decision for decades…
Additional extract:
One explanation is the emergence of new data. “The wolverine’s adapted and has evolved in cold, snowy conditions,” FWS biologist Jesse D’Elia told the New York Times. “As these conditions continue to change in the Western US, the outlook for wolverines is less secure than we found in our previous assessments.” But other experts, including one federal judge, say the delay may have been a result of “political pressure” by Western state governments, where a listing may impact the snowmobiling and fossil fuel industries.
For many species, it’s a familiar story. Due to a variety of reasons, including insufficient funding, bureaucracy, and a lack of political will, environmental advocates say, the process of listing a species can often take more than a decade.
… here’s a sample of 15 species that waited more than a decade for protection…..or are still in line. Where possible, we included explanations for why the listings took so long (see linked article for referenced explanations and more detail as well as a short list (with brief descriptions) of species that have gone extinct while waiting).
Do tree-planting Campaigns Follow Best Practices for Successful Forest Restoration? January 29, 2024
Introduction:
(Eurekalert) Global tree-planting campaigns have reached fad-like proportions over the past decade, and it’s easy to understand their appeal. Healthy forests help in the fight against climate change by absorbing some of our excess carbon dioxide emissions, and they can provide wildlife habitat and quality-of-life benefits for local human communities too. So why not plant more trees? It seems like an easy win.
But the problem is, there’s a huge difference between simply planting a tree and making sure that trees survive and grow over the long-term. And without the necessary ecological understanding or long-term planning and follow-up that goes into successful reforestation projects, tree-planting efforts can end up being useless, wasteful, or even actively harmful to people and the planet.
That’s why restoration ecologists, like UC Santa Cruz Environmental Studies Professor Karen Holl, have been working to educate tree-planting organizations and the public about best practices for successful reforestation. The latest paper by Holl’s research team set out to examine the possible impact of those education efforts.
“One of the common problems is that organizations will just say, ‘We're going to put this many trees in the ground,’ but the important question is, ‘What comes afterward?’,” Holl said. “There are many documented failures from tree-planting campaigns, so we would hope to see organizations improving their practices and taking on more accountability, including through publicly reporting data.”
To examine these issues, UCSC postdoctoral researcher Spencer Schubert led an analysis of publicly available web content for 99 organizations that coordinate large-scale tree-planting programs around the globe. The research team, which included three undergraduates and one graduate student from UCSC, rated each organization based on how well their public information demonstrated a commitment to best practices
With increasingly ambitious targets from both the global community and individual organizations, the risk rises that project establishment will outpace the ability to identify and secure growing sites where trees will persist. Project failures result in financial waste that could have been spent on other conservation goals and may lead to reduced confidence in tree growing (Höhl et al., 2020; Lobe Ekamby & Mudu, 2022; Rana et al., 2022). We advocate the importance of addressing common pitfalls that have led to previous reforestation failures and the need to follow best practices guidelines to achieve desired goals, particularly as many inexperienced organizations continue to join the reforestation movement. We expect intermediary NGOs will play increasingly larger roles in global reforestation in years ahead, along with other large-monied interests joining these movements (Lamont et al., 2023). Holding the various actors in reforestation movements to a higher standard will require moving beyond narrow focus on tree planting statistics toward increasing collective consciousness among practitioners and funders about practices and standards that are most likely to lead to long-term success.
Landmark UN Report Reveals Shocking State of Wildlife: The World’s Migratory Species of Animals are in Decline, and the Global Extinction Risk is Increasing February 12, 2024
Introduction:
(Eurekalert) The first-ever State of the World’s Migratory Species report was launched today by the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), a UN biodiversity treaty, at the opening of a major UN wildlife conservation conference (CMS COP14). The landmark report reveals:
• While some migratory species listed under CMS are improving, nearly half (44 per cent) are showing population declines.
• More than one-in-five (22 per cent) of CMS-listed species are threatened with extinction.
• Nearly all (97 per cent) of CMS-listed fish are threatened with extinction.
• The extinction risk is growing for migratory species globally, including those not listed under CMS.
• Half (51 per cent) of Key Biodiversity Areas identified as important for CMS-listed migratory animals do not have protected status, and 58 per cent of the monitored sites recognized as being important for CMS-listed species are experiencing unsustainable levels of human-caused pressure.
• The two greatest threats to both CMS-listed and all migratory species are overexploitation and habitat loss due to human activity. Three out of four CMS-listed species are impacted by habitat loss, degradation and fragmentation, and seven out of ten CMS-listed species are impacted by overexploitation (including intentional taking as well as incidental capture).
Reforestation Has Protected Eastern States from Temperature Rise by Oliver Milman
February 23, 2024
Introduction:
(Mother Jones) Trees provide innumerable benefits to the world, from food to shelter to oxygen, but researchers have now found their dramatic rebound in the eastern US has delivered a further, stunning feat—the curtailing of the soaring temperatures caused by the climate crisis.
While the US, like the rest of the world, has heated up since industrial times due to the burning of fossil fuels, scientists have long been puzzled by a so-called “warming hole” over parts of the US south-east where temperatures have flatlined, or even cooled, despite the unmistakable broader warming trend.
A major reason for this anomaly, the new study finds, is the vast reforestation of much of the eastern US following the initial loss of large numbers of trees in the wake of European settlement in America. Such large expanses have been reforested in the past century—with enough trees sprouting back to cover an area larger than England—that it has helped stall the affect of global heating.
“The reforestation has been remarkable and we have shown this has translated into the surrounding air temperature,” said Mallory Barnes, an environmental scientist at Indiana University who led the research. “The ‘warming hole’ has been a real mystery and while this doesn’t explain all of it, this research shows there is a really important link to the trees coming back.”
There was a surge in deforestation from the start of the US’s early colonial history, as woodland was razed for agriculture and housing, but this began to reverse from around the 1920s as more people began to move into cities, leaving marginal land to become populated again with trees. The US government, meanwhile, embarked upon an aggressive tree-planting program, with these factors leading to about 17 million acres of reforested area in the past century in the eastern US.
caltrek’s comment: I obtained a sense of this when I was shown a parcel in Maine that included evidence of previous farming where that piece of land was now completely covered in trees. At the time, that came as a surprise to me.
The World’s Rarest Fish Is Making A Comeback, One Ridiculous Baby At A Time by Rachael Funnel
March 21, 2024
Introduction:
(IFL Science) Behold, the rarest fish in the world! The red handfish, Thymichthys politus, is known from just two small patches of reef off the coast of Tasmania, thought to be home to around 100 adults. Habitat degradation and climate change have threatened them with extinction, but thanks to a breeding program, they welcomed 21 hatchlings in 2023.
It was the second time red handfish have been successfully bred in captivity, and gave rise to a new generation that represented a quarter of their wild population. Mother handfish will care for their eggs until they hatch after around 50 days.
The goal? To release these babies into the wild and bolster the wild breeding population. However, before they can swim in the big blue, they've got to graduate handfish school.
“Handfish school is an initiative funded by our supporters at Foundation for Australia’s Most Endangered species, and its purpose is to develop ‘street smart’ skills for handfish that have been raised in captivity,” University of Tasmania handfish experts Dr Jemina Stuart-Smith and Dr Andrew Trotter told IFLScience.
It includes introducing more complex habitats, other species, and conditions that they’re likely to encounter in the wild. It’s really an acclimation period that provides an opportunity for fish to learn natural behaviours such as finding food, seeking shelter, interacting with conspecific species, and navigating in the sea. The purpose is to increase their chances of survival upon release.”
caltrek wrote: ↑Thu Dec 14, 2023 10:32 pm How Can Europe Restore Its Nature? December 14, 2023
Introduction:
(Eurekalert) The ‘Nature Restoration Law’ (NRL) requires member states of the EU to implement restoration measures on at least 20 per cent of land and marine areas by 2030, and in all ecosystems in need of restoration by 2050. This includes specific targets to rewet peatlands and to increase pollinator populations. The NRL has already overcome various hurdles: most recently, it was approved by the EU Parliament’s Environment Committee, after delegations of the Parliament and the Council negotiated the final text.
But will the regulation really achieve its aims? The authors, including scientists leading large European projects on nature restoration and biodiversity, analysed experiences with other European environmental directives and policies, and evaluated the prospects of the NRL to be successful.
“The NRL avoids several pitfalls that often obstruct the implementation of European policies and regulations, showing that the Commission learned from past experiences” says Prof. Dr Daniel Hering from the University of Duisburg-Essen, first author of the study. “The regulation sets ambitious targets and timelines, and implementation steps are clearly laid out. It also saves time as it does not need to be transposed into national law.” At the same time, national implementation will be crucial for the NRL’s success. “While targets are precisely defined and binding, the steps to achieve them need to be decided by individual European countries and most of them are voluntary” says Prof. Dr Josef Settele from Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), one of the study’s authors.
Key to the implementation will be the cooperation of nature restoration with land users, in particular with agriculture. “Intensive agriculture is still a key driver for biodiversity loss in Europe”, says senior author Dr Guy Pe’er. “But targets for agriculture and nature restoration could be coordinated, with opportunities for both”. Agriculture directly benefits from healthy soils and pollinator populations and from increased water storage capacity in the landscape that are all targets of the NRL.
The authors conclude that funds provided by the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy need to be used for achieving the NRL’s aims: a statement to be intensively debated in science and application.
EU nature restoration laws in balance as member states withdraw support
Mon 25 Mar 2024 13.41 GMT
The EU’s nature restoration laws are hanging in the balance after a number of member states, including Hungary and Italy, withdrew support for the legislation.
Spain’s environment minister, Teresa Ribera, said it would be “enormously irresponsible” for countries to drop the laws, which have been two years in the making and are designed to reverse decades of damage to biodiversity on land and in waterways.
But a vote at a summit of environment ministers in Brussels on Monday was cancelled after it became apparent that the legislation would not pass its final stage with the majority vote required.
The setback is not the first to hit the EU’s environmental agenda, as policymakers decide how to respond to farmers’ protests. As the protests continue – and in advance of the European parliament’s elections in June – many green rules have already been weakened.
“It would be enormously irresponsible to drop the entire European green agenda. Europe cannot afford to drop the green agenda, just as it cannot afford to let its ecosystems die or leave its system in poor condition, in a state of danger,” said Ribera.
‘Enormously exciting’: farm to create biggest natural grassland in southern England
Fri 29 Mar 2024 12.00 GMT
The rolling hills south of Salisbury Plain are a bleak scene of vast arable fields and tightly grazed pasture dotted with scores of sheep.
In recent decades, Lower Pertwood farm has embraced organic growing, producing oats, barley and other crops, while boosting numbers of rare corn buntings and other wildlife with wildflower banks and newly planted trees.
But as wildlife continues to decline in Wiltshire and the farm’s profits plummet amid an increasingly unpredictable climate, the owners are turning to farming nature instead.
The 2,800-acre arable farm begins its transformation this spring into the biggest grassland rewilding project in southern England, in an attempt to restore declining plants, insects and endangered species including cuckoos, grasshopper warblers and turtle doves.
Perhaps as few as 250 individual great Indian bustards survive. Photograph: Journey with my kaleidoscope/Getty Images
The “Pertwood Plain” project, masterminded by Restore, a land management company specialising in large-scale restoration led by the naturalist Benedict Macdonald, will ultimately see low densities of pigs and cattle roaming free to recreate flower-rich chalk grassland. This naturalistic grazing, alongside interventions such as adding green hay and brash piles where birds perch and excrete seeds into the soil, will give rise to a mosaic of grass and scrubland teeming with invertebrate life.
