The Holocene Extinction

[kassy]

The researchers did not consider waste in making their calculation, though if it were factored in, it would have likely tipped the scales in favor of human-made materials as early as 2013, the study found.

...

The study finds that humans have changed the planet with staggering speed.

Since the first agricultural revolution began roughly 12,000 years ago, humans have cut global biomass nearly in half, from 2 teratons to around 1.1 teratons today.
Though an ever-growing amount of Earth's land is being used to grow crops, their total mass is dwarfed by losses elsewhere in the biosphere, where deforestation and other shifts in land use driven by humans have dramatically shrunk plant mass. The study finds that hunting, overfishing and the raising of farm animals have also cut into the overall biomass.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/09/world/human-made-mass-exceeds-biomass-report-2020

Slowly evolving into Coruscant...

[Tom_Mazanec]

Maybe in a billion years there will be an Anthropocene layer of the Earth’s crust.

[vox_mundi]

Mass Extinctions of Land-Dwelling Animals Occur In 27-Million-Year Cycle
https://phys.org/news/2020-12-mass-extinctions-land-dwelling-animals-million-year.html

Mass extinctions of land-dwelling animals—including amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and birds—follow a cycle of about 27 million years, coinciding with previously reported mass extinctions of ocean life, according to a new analysis published in the journal Historical Biology.

The study also finds that these mass extinctions align with major asteroid impacts and devastating volcanic outpourings of lava called flood-basalt eruptions—providing potential causes for why the extinctions occurred.

[kassy]

This article is very interesting but not relevant to the holocene so i replaced the article with a link to the same article in the astronomy thread. Any discussion of this should also be on that thread.

[kassy]

Devastating Skin Disease Covering Up To 70% Of Dolphin’s Body Tied To Climate Change

Scientists at The Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, CA – the largest marine mammal hospital in the world – and international colleagues have identified a novel skin disease in dolphins that is linked to climate change.

The study is a groundbreaking discovery, as it is the first time since the disease first appeared in 2005 that scientists have been able to link a cause to the condition that affects coastal dolphin communities worldwide. Due to the decreased water salinity brought upon by climate change, the dolphins develop patchy and raised skin lesions across their bodies – sometimes covering upwards of 70 percent of their skin.

...

This study comes on the heels of significant outbreaks in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida and Texas and Australia in recent years. In all of these locations, a sudden and drastic decrease in salinity in the waters was the common factor. Coastal dolphins are accustomed to seasonal changes in salinity levels in their marine habitat, but they do not live in freshwater. The increasing severity and frequency of storm events like hurricanes and cyclones, particularly if they are preceded by drought conditions, are dumping unusual volumes of rain that turn coastal waters to freshwater. Freshwater conditions can persist for months, particularly after intense storms such as hurricanes Harvey and Katrina. With the increasing climate temperatures, climate scientists have predicted extreme storms like these will occur more frequently and, consequently, will result in more frequent and severe disease outbreaks in dolphins.

“This devastating skin disease has been killing dolphins since Hurricane Katrina, and we’re pleased to finally define the problem,” said Duignan. “With a record hurricane season in the Gulf of Mexico this year and more intense storm systems worldwide due to climate change, we can absolutely expect to see more of these devastating outbreaks killing dolphins.”

https://www.eurasiareview.com/20122020-devastating-skin-disease-covering-up-to-70-of-dolphins-body-tied-to-climate-change/

OA article:
Fresh water skin disease in dolphins: a case definition based on pathology and environmental factors in Australia

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-78858-2

[kassy]

Ivory: Elephant decline revealed by shipwreck cargo

Researchers have examined ancient DNA preserved in elephant tusks that were among the cargo of a 487-year-old shipwreck.

Their forensic examination of the 100 tusks pinpointed the devastation caused to the elephant population by centuries of ivory trade.

On this single ship, researchers found genetic evidence of 17 distinct herds of the threatened animals.

Today, scientists can find only four of those herds surviving in Africa.

....

That preservation meant that the international team of researchers - including experts from from Namibia, the US and the UK - could unpick exactly how many herds of elephants the tusks came from.

The team examined something called mitochondrial DNA. Mitochondria are the power stations of every cell, converting food into fuel. And crucially for this study, the genetic blueprint that makes mitochondria is passed down from mother to offspring.

This makes it a particularly revealing piece of code for elephants.

"Elephants live in female-led family groups, and they tend to stay in the same geographic area throughout their lives," explained Alida de Flamingh from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who led the study. "We were able to reconstruct complete mitochondrial genomes from these really old samples."

Those completed pieces of genetic code showed that the tusks on this single trading vessel came from 17 distinct elephant herds. The most up to date genetic information about the elephants surviving in that part of Africa today showed that only four of those could be found.

"That was quite shocking - that loss of diversity," said Dr Coutu. "Next we'd really like to fill in those gaps in a chronological way. We can look at where these pinch points are in history and create a timeline of exactly how and when the huge trade in ivory had an impact."

...

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-55340975

[longwalks1]

In re Skin Disease Dolphin

Having lived close to a brackish bay (Mobile Bay - Alabama) I did find the word freshwater, mildly unsettling.   But skimming  the article and seeing that it had gone from >30 ppt to <5 ppt salinity and my quibbling is over.   5 years doing SDWA's (Safe Drinking Water Act - usOfa EPA regulations)  had a factor in my bias more towards an even lower of salinity as being still brackish. 

Although via Wikipedia I get a defintion of brackish as

Technically, brackish water contains between 0.5 and 30 grams of salt per litre—more often expressed as 0.5 to 30 parts per thousand (‰),

   I'll just chill out.   For a dramatic change I can call the authors usage more nuance than mild exaggeration.   Nuance is needed these days.

[Tom_Mazanec]

That confused me, longwalks1. I thought ppt was parts per trillion, like on the SF6 thread. They should use ppth and pptr for something like that.

[longwalks1]

Analytical aqueous chemistry is more ppthousands  and ppmillions.   pptrillion is a newer kid on the block, but of course no teenager.   

[Tom_Mazanec]

I guess in twenty years we will be arguing if ppq is parts per quadrillion or parts per quintillion.

[kassy]

Different things, different backgrounds. You just have to study them a bit.

[vox_mundi]

Mass Die-Off of Birds in South-Western US 'Caused By Starvation'
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/26/mass-die-off-of-birds-in-south-western-us-caused-by-starvation-aoe

The mass die-off of thousands of songbirds in south-western US was caused by long-term starvation, made worse by unseasonably cold weather probably linked to the climate crisis, scientists have said.

Flycatchers, swallows and warblers were among the migratory birds “falling out of the sky” in September, with carcasses found in New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Arizona and Nebraska. A USGS National Wildlife Health Center necropsy has found 80% of specimens showed typical signs of starvation.

... Most of the birds were insect and berry eaters that migrate from tundra landscapes in Alaska and Canada to winter in Central and South America. Most of them have to stop and refuel every few days on their migration.

... We’re not talking about short-term starvation – this is a longer-term starvation,” said Martha Desmond, a professor in the biology department at New Mexico State University (NMSU), who collected carcasses. “They became so emaciated they actually had to turn to wasting their major flight muscles. This means that this isn’t something that happened overnight.”

The birds probably would have started their migration in poor condition, which could be related to the “mega-drought” in the south west of the country. “Here in New Mexico we’ve seen a very dry year, and we’re forecast to have more of those dry years. And in turn I would say it appears that a change in climate is playing a role in this, and that we can expect to see more of this in the future,” said Desmond.

[kassy]

Severe climate-driven loss of native molluscs reported off Israel’s coast

Mediterranean study finds subtidal populations of cockles, whelks and other species have collapsed by 90%

...

Native mollusc populations along the coast of Israel have collapsed by about 90% in recent decades because they cannot tolerate the increasingly hot water, according to a new study, which raises concerns about the wider ecosystem and neighbouring regions.

Scientists said the sharp decline of native cockles, whelks and other shallow subtidal invertebrates is likely to have spread to waters off other countries in the region and would continue to progress westward to Greece and beyond as global temperatures increased.


Revisited: What happens when the oceans heat up?
Read more
The paper – published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B journal – estimates native mollusc populations have fallen to 12% of their historical species richness in shallow subtidal sedimentary substrates, and to 5% on rocky substrates.

...

The authors of the paper expressed surprise at their findings. “The magnitude was totally unexpected,” said Paolo Albano, a marine biologist at the University of Vienna. “I expected a seascape that I was well accustomed to as a Mediterranean specialist but enriched with some interesting exotic species that had entered through the Suez canal. But what I found was a desert, totally devoid of even common Mediterranean species.”

The murex, for example, is a gastropod that has been used throughout the Mediterranean since Roman times for the Tyrian purple clothing dye. Albano said he found no members of this species on the 200km of coastline in the four-year study.

The research team took samples at multiple points, then compared living mollusc numbers with previous population sizes, which were estimated from empty shells found in sediment. The shortfall exceeded anything seen before. “This is the largest climate-driven regional-scale diversity loss in the oceans documented to date,” the paper says.

...

As with the declines of pollinators and soil quality on land, this has wider consequences. Molluscs make up the largest marine phylum, accounting for 23% of all sea organisms. As well as providing meat for the seafood industry, they play an essential role in regulating the chemistry of the ocean by recycling nutrients and removing nitrogen and phosphorus. In part that role might be taken on by new invasive tropical species from the Red Sea, but preliminary results suggested they would not perform the same ecosystem role as the lost native ones.

...

The Israeli coast – which is one of the hottest parts of the Mediterranean – experienced a temperature increase of 3C between 1980 and 2013. The average summer surface temperature is 32C. This is thought to have triggered the eradication of native mollusc populations – a phenomenon detected in previous studies elsewhere.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/06/severe-climate-driven-loss-of-native-molluscs-reported-off-israels-coast

paper:
Native biodiversity collapse in the eastern Mediterranean
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2020.2469

[kassy]

Scots scientists reveal climate change hit on humpback whale breeding

NEW threats to global whale numbers have been identified as Scottish researchers find a "significant" drop in breeding success in the wild.

It's understood that the fall in newborn sightings is linked to the availability of prey fish in the previous year – something itself is connected to ocean conditions.

Experts from St Andrews University documented a major decline in calving rates amongst humpback whales.

...

The St Andrews team has now established that environmental shifts in the krill-rich Gulf of Lawrence in Canada – one of the world's top whale watching sites and an important summer feeding ground – is affecting the breeding of humpbacks.

The sea mammal specialists worked with colleagues from Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans to investigate using blubber biopsy samples to identify pregnant females and sightings records of individual females collected by the Mingan Island Cetacean Study, comparing the years from 2004 to 2018.

They found calving rates have fallen "significantly" over the period.

And the probability of sighting females with calves was found to be linked to the abundance of herring – a main prey species – the previous year.

Prior to the work, it had been thought that humpbacks and other baleen whales could show resilience to climate change because of their ability to change their migratory patterns or change their diet.

However, the results are said to show that these attributes may not be enough to prevent ecosystem change from harming their reproductive success.

and more on:
https://www.thenational.scot/news/18988461.scots-scientists-reveal-climate-change-hit-humpback-whale-breeding/

Declining reproductive success in the Gulf of St. Lawrence’s humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) reflects ecosystem shifts on their feeding grounds
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/gcb.15466

[kassy]

In changing oceans, sea stars may be 'drowning'

For more than seven years, a mysterious wasting disease has nearly killed off sea star populations around the world. Some of these species stand at the brink of extinction.

New Cornell University-led research suggests that starfish, victims of sea star wasting disease (SSWD), may actually be in respiratory distress—literally "drowning" in their own environment—as elevated microbial activity derived from nearby organic matter and warm ocean temperatures rob the creatures of their ability to breathe.

"As humans, we breathe, we ventilate, we bring air into our lungs and we exhale," said Ian Hewson, professor of microbiology at Cornell University. "Sea stars diffuse oxygen over their outer surface through little structures called papulae, or skin gills. If there is not enough oxygen surrounding the papulae, the starfish can't breathe."

The research, "Evidence That Microorganisms at the Animal-Water Interface Drive Sea Star Wasting Disease," was published in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology.

According to Hewson, ocean conditions lead to the production of unusual amounts of organic material, which he said prompts bacteria to thrive. As bacteria consume the organic matter, they deplete the oxygen in the water—creating a low-oxygen micro-environment that surrounds starfish and leads to deflation, discoloration, puffiness, and limb twisting or curling.

"It's a cascade of problems that starts with changes in the environment," Hewson said, explaining that most of the organic matter comes from microscopic algae exudation (a discharge), zooplankton excretion and egestion, and from decaying animal carcasses. This stimulates a group of bacteria called copiotrophs, which survive on carbon and rapidly consume organic matter, he said.

The copiotrophs respire, he said, so while absorbing the organic matter, they deplete oxygen in the sea star's watery space.

"It's organic matter concentrations in the water," he said. "If you have a dead and rotting starfish next to starfish that are healthy, all of that dead one's organic matter drifts and fuels the bacteria, creating a hypoxic environment. It looks like disease is being transmitted."

...

https://phys.org/news/2021-01-oceans-sea-stars.html

paper:
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2020.610009/full

[vox_mundi]

Insect Populations Suffering Death by 1,000 Cuts, Say Scientists
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/11/insect-populations-suffering-death-1000-cuts-scientists

... The 12 new studies are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Nature is under siege [and] most biologists agree that the world has entered its sixth mass extinction event,” concludes the lead analysis in the package. “Insects are suffering from ‘death by a thousand cuts’ [and] severe insect declines can potentially have global ecological and economic consequences.”

Prof David Wagner of the University of Connecticut in the US, the lead author of the analysis, said the abundance of many insect populations was falling by 1-2% a year, a rate that should not be seen as small: “You’re losing 10-20% of your animals over a single decade and that is just absolutely frightening. You’re tearing apart the tapestry of life.”

Wagner said most of the causes of insect declines were well known. “But there’s one really big unknown and that’s climate change – that’s the one that really scares me the most.” He said increased climate variability could be “driving [insect] extinctions at a rate that we haven’t seen before”.

“Insects are really susceptible to drought because they’re all surface area and no volume,” Wagner said. “Things like dragonflies and damselflies can desiccate to death in an hour with really low humidity.”

One of the studies identifies an increasingly erratic climate as the overarching reason for region-wide losses of moths and other insects in the forests of north-western Costa Rica since 1978. This could be a “harbinger of the broader fate of Earth’s tropical forests”, said Wagner.

Insect Decline In the Anthropocene: Death By a Thousand Cuts
https://www.pnas.org/content/118/2/e2023989118

[vox_mundi]

Top Scientists Warn of 'Ghastly Future of Mass Extinction' and Climate Disruption
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/13/top-scientists-warn-of-ghastly-future-of-mass-extinction-and-climate-disruption-aoe

The planet is facing a “ghastly future of mass extinction, declining health and climate-disruption upheavals” that threaten human survival because of ignorance and inaction, according to an international group of scientists, who warn people still haven’t grasped the urgency of the biodiversity and climate crises.

The 17 experts, including Prof Paul Ehrlich from Stanford University, author of The Population Bomb, and scientists from Mexico, Australia and the US, say the planet is in a much worse state than most people – even scientists – understood.

“The scale of the threats to the biosphere and all its lifeforms – including humanity – is in fact so great that it is difficult to grasp for even well-informed experts,” they write in a report in Frontiers in Conservation Science which references more than 150 studies detailing the world’s major environmental challenges.

The delay between destruction of the natural world and the impacts of these actions means people do not recognise how vast the problem is, the paper argues. “[The] mainstream is having difficulty grasping the magnitude of this loss, despite the steady erosion of the fabric of human civilisation.”

The report warns that climate-induced mass migrations, more pandemics and conflicts over resources will be inevitable unless urgent action is taken.

“Environmental deterioration is infinitely more threatening to civilisation than Trumpism or Covid-19,” Ehrlich told the Guardian.

“Our main point is that once you realise the scale and imminence of the problem, it becomes clear that we need much more than individual actions like using less plastic, eating less meat, or flying less. Our point is that we need big systematic changes and fast,” Professor Daniel Blumstein from the University of California Los Angeles, who helped write the paper, told the Guardian.

... The report comes months after the world failed to meet a single UN Aichi biodiversity target, created to stem the destruction of the natural world, the second consecutive time governments have failed to meet their 10-year biodiversity goals. This week a coalition of more than 50 countries pledged to protect almost a third of the planet by 2030.

Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419/full

[gerontocrat]

"The Ghastly Future" - vox_mundi got there first.

Qu:- Will those super-intelligent robots** (currently closer to reality than is comfortable) see the destruction of carbon-based life forms on this planet as undesirable?
(**see vox_mundi's posts on Robots and AI: Our Immortality or Extinction)

[kassy]

Lets leave the robots out of this since it is such a big tragedy on its own and we did it mostly without them anyway...

[vox_mundi]

Monarch Butterfly Population Moves Closer to Extinction
https://phys.org/news/2021-01-monarch-butterfly-population-closer-extinction.html



The number of western monarch butterflies wintering along the California coast has plummeted precipitously to a record low, putting the orange-and-black insects closer to extinction, researchers announced Tuesday.

An annual winter count by the Xerces Society recorded fewer than 2,000 butterflies, a massive decline from the tens of thousands tallied in recent years and the millions that clustered in trees from Northern California's Marin County to San Diego County in the south in the 1980s.

Western monarch butterflies head south from the Pacific Northwest to California each winter, returning to the same places and even the same trees, where they cluster to keep warm. The monarchs generally arrive in California at the beginning of November and spread across the country once warmer weather arrives in March.

On the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains, another monarch population travels from southern Canada and the northeastern United States across thousands of miles to spend the winter in central Mexico. Scientists estimate the monarch population in the eastern U.S. has fallen about 80% since the mid-1990s, but the drop-off in the western U.S. has been even steeper.

The Xerces Society, a nonprofit environmental organization that focuses on the conservation of invertebrates, recorded about 29,000 butterflies in its annual survey last winter. That was not much different than the tally the winter before, when an all-time low of 27,000 monarchs were counted—less than 1% of historic populations.

But the count this year is dismal. At iconic monarch wintering sites in the city of Pacific Grove, volunteers didn't see a single butterfly this winter. Other well-known locations, such as Pismo State Beach Monarch Butterfly Grove and Natural Bridges State Park, only hosted a few hundred butterflies, researchers said.

Massive wildfires throughout the U.S. West last year may have influenced their breeding and migration, researchers said.

A 2017 study by Washington State University researchers predicted that if the monarch population dropped below 30,000, the species would likely go extinct in the next few decades if nothing is done to save them.

https://xerces.org/monarchs/western-monarch-conservation


... all gone ...

[Tom_Mazanec]

Time running out for Northwest salmon species, report says
https://apnews.com/article/climate-climate-change-salmon-fish-washington-7dad440d7565edaf4684f72ebc4bb423

A Washington report has found one of the state’s iconic fish is facing a threat to its existence as a result of climate change.
The 2020 State of Salmon in Watersheds report by the Washington State Recreation and Conservation Office found the state’s salmon are “teetering on the brink of extinction,” Northwest News Network reported.

[gerontocrat]

What a way to show species extinction

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/jan/25/i-almost-cracked-16-month-artistic-performance-of-mass-extinction-comes-to-a-close

I almost cracked’: 16-month artistic performance of mass extinction comes to a close

Since 2019, Lucienne Rickard has been drawing detailed sketches of lost species in a Hobart gallery. On Sunday she erased the final one

The Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in Hobart is filled with people waiting for the swift parrot to disappear.

The Hobart artist Lucienne Rickard has spent five weeks drawing a large-scale pencil sketch of the critically endangered bird. Picking up her eraser, she tells her audience, “If we don’t do something soon, this is what will happen.”

The erasure, which took place on Sunday as part of Mona Foma, marked the culmination of Rickard’s Extinction Studies. The artist had spent 16 months in TMAG, meticulously drawing an archive of lost species: deer and crayfish, mice and turtles, bats and bilbies (a small, burrowing, long-eared marsupial). When they were done, she would rub them out.

The lifelike parrot is perched above the ground on its paper canvas: the last animal to go.

Below it lies the remains of all former black-and-white drawings: shavings from 25 erasers, which had removed 187 graphite pencils’ worth of art. In a few minutes, this bird will become part of the waste.

[kassy]

Indeed. Saw the link yesterday and did not click it.
The art is every bit as effective as i feared. 

[kassy]

Oceanic Shark and Ray Numbers Down 71 Percent over Past 50 Years

Over the past half century, oceanic, or open-ocean, shark and ray population sizes have shrunk by 71 percent, according to a study published January 27 in Nature, a trend that coincides with increased fishing of these species.

“Knowing that this is a global figure, the findings are stark,” coauthor Nick Dulvy of Simon Fraser University says in a statement. “If we don’t do anything, it will be too late. It’s much worse than other animal populations we’ve been looking at. It’s an incredible rate of decline steeper than most elephant and rhino declines, and those animals are iconic in driving conservation efforts on land.”

There are 31 shark and ray species in the open ocean, 24 of which are now endangered, according to the Red List Index standards of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Three species—the oceanic whitetip, scalloped hammerhead, and great hammerhead—are critically endangered.

Shark declines have been documented previously, but to get a global sense of the animals’ situation, the team used long-term data from the Red List along with the Living Planet Index, a venture between the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London that tracks the abundance of species. These data sets quantify species’ subpopulation sizes in different geographical areas over time, and the team used these to extrapolate global numbers.

...

https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/oceanic-shark-and-ray-numbers-down-71-percent-over-past-50-years-68399

The OA paper is linked in the article.

We clearly need more no fishing areas in the high seas.

[bluesky]

"The Dasgupta Review—a two-year global collaboration of hundreds of academics overseen by Partha Dasgupta, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Cambridge—said that all livelihoods depended on the health of the planet.

It showed that while global capital produced per person had doubled in the three decades since 1992, the stock of natural capital—that is, the quantifiable benefit an individual derives from services bestowed by nature—had plunged 40 percent.

"While humanity has prospered immensely in recent decades, the ways in which we have achieved such prosperity means that it has come at a devastating cost to nature," the review said.

It called for a fundamental redressing of humanity's demands and nature's supply, warning that biodiversity is intricately linked with human wellbeing and health.

Some species are going extinct up to 1,000 times faster than the historical average, "undermining nature's productivity, resilience and adaptability", the review said."

https://phys.org/news/2021-02-economic-growth-devastating-nature.html

[bluesky]

I just wonder how the large UK corporations and the UK government are going to adapt to  and  implement  the conclusions of the Dasgupta Review, they may will in a schizophrenic mindset for some times,  unless the citizens of this country put pressure on both, and this what Dasgupta was inferring in a video last summer...

"On 2 February, the UK Government launched the Dasgupta Review on the Economics of Biodiversity. This independent review was commissioned by the UK Treasury to shape the international response to biodiversity loss and inform global action from all stakeholders. The Dasgupta Review sets out a new framework, grounded in ecology and Earth Sciences, yet applying the principles from finance and economics to understand the sustainability of our interaction with nature and prioritize efforts to enhance nature and prosperity.

This business summary highlights the main points from the Dasgupta Review relevant to business and puts it in the context of other landmark reports, global policy events and frameworks related to the biodiversity and climate agendas. The Dasgupta Review describes the hidden cost of liquidating natural capital assets as a constraint for long-term value creation. It calls for action to increase the quantity and quality of our stock of nature and demonstrates that acting now will be significantly less costly than delaying further.

Fundamentally, the Dasgupta Review develops the economics of biodiversity on the understanding that we, and our economies, are embedded within nature- not external to it. There has been an institutional failure to account for the externalities nature provides. One of the solution areas identified by the Review is the need to change our measures of economic success. Moving to inclusive wealth, which measures all capital assets (ie. human capital, produced capital, and natural capital) as the aggregate value of a country’s economic success, is a necessary step that will allow the world to return to a path of prosperity that operates within planetary boundaries."

https://www.wbcsd.org/Programs/Food-and-Nature/Resources/Dasgupta-Review-on-the-Economics-of-Biodiversity-2021-Business-Summary

[Ktb]

The Holocene extinction rages on, even against humans not considered to be part of the dominant culture.

Dubbed "The Amazon Chernobyl", Chevron (then Texaco) purposefully built pollution drainage pipes that dumped directly into drinking water and hunting area of 5 indigenous groups in Ecuador. Then when the indigenous people became concerned, Texaco flew in their engineers to waylay fears, lying directly to the faces of the indigenous peoples that the oil tainted water was fine to drink, fish in, and swim in.

Chevron has admitted that Texaco dumped more than 18 billion gallons of toxic
waste  into  Amazon  waterways,  abandoned  more  than  900  waste  pits,  burned
millions  of  cubic meters  of  poisonous  gases  with  no  controls,  and  spilled more
than 17 million gallons of oil due to pipeline ruptures.

Texaco  also  dumped  millions  of  gallons  of  oil  waste  along  dirt  roads,  never
budgeted for pipeline maintenance, and spent no money on environmental cleanup or health care for the local population.  The company never conducted a single
health evaluation or environmental impact study while it was the operator.

Experts  estimate  the  damage  is  30  times  larger  than  that  of  the  Exxon  Valdez
disaster.  Some call the area the “Amazon Chernobyl.”

https://amazonwatch.org/documents/ecuador-press-kit/executive-summary.pdf


One of the human rights lawyers working for the indigenous groups since 1993 has been arrested in the USA in order to prevent further litigation and scare other lawyers from taking on the case.

Listen to a detailed account of this atrocity and the assault on Steven Donziger here:

https://quarantine-tapes.simplecast.com/episodes/the-quarantine-tapes-157-steven-donziger-pGm2WAUI

I have learned by working on this case, that the abuse of judicial power can only happen in darkness. When people speak up and call it out, those responsible don't want to show their faces. That's because acts of corruption by public officials are at core, personal acts of cowardice.

- Steven Donziger

[kassy]

What an outrageous story. Time for a social media campaign against Chevron?
And mayb look into whatever happened on the legal side too. 

[vox_mundi]

[vox_mundi]

Sawfish Face Global Extinction Unless Overfishing is Curbed
https://phys.org/news/2021-02-sawfish-global-extinction-overfishing-curbed.html



Sawfish have disappeared from half of the world's coastal waters and the distinctive shark-like rays face complete extinction due to overfishing, according to a new study by Simon Fraser University researchers, published in Science Advances.

Sawfish, named after their unique long, narrow noses lined by teeth, called rostra, that resemble a sawblade, were once found along the coastlines of 90 countries but they are now among the world's most threatened family of marine fishes, presumed extinct from 46 of those nations. There are 18 countries where at least one species of sawfish is missing, and 28 more where two species have disappeared.

According to SFU researchers Helen Yan and Nick Dulvy, three of the five species of sawfish are critically endangered, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, and the other two are endangered.

Their teeth on their rostra are easily caught in fishing nets. Sawfish fins are among the most valuable in the global shark fin trade and rostra are also sold for novelty, medicine and as spurs for cockfighting.

The current presence of all sawfishes world-wide is unknown, but Dulvy warns complete extinction is possible if nothing is done to curb overfishing and to protect threatened habitats, such as mangroves, where sawfish can thrive.

Helen F. Yan et al, Overfishing and habitat loss drive range contraction of iconic marine fishes to near extinction, Science Advances (2021)
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/7/eabb6026

[vox_mundi]

Study Finds Even the Common House Sparrow is Declining
https://phys.org/news/2021-02-common-house-sparrow-declining.html

The European House Sparrow has a story to tell about survival in the modern world. In parts of its native range in Europe, House Sparrow numbers are down by nearly 60%. Their fate in the U.S. and Canada is less well known. A new study by Cornell Lab of Ornithology scientists aims to clarify the status of this non-native species, using 21 years of citizen science data from the Cornell Lab's Project FeederWatch. The results are published in the Wilson Journal of Ornithology.

FeederWatchers record observations during the non-breeding season when House Sparrows gather in flocks. Reports from nearly 12,500 sites were used and cross-referenced with the National Land Cover database to determine whether the U.S. sightings came from rural or urban locations.

Findings for the U.S. and Canada:

- Winter flocks in urban areas were larger than flocks in rural areas.

- House Sparrows declined in urban areas but remained stable in rural areas.

- The study found that declines in House Sparrow populations were no greater when Sharp-shinned or Cooper's Hawks were also present.

- From 1995 to 2016, the proportion of FeederWatch sites reporting House Sparrows declined by 7.5% and mean flock sizes declined by 22%.

"When even a bird as common as the House Sparrow is experiencing population declines, this is probably a reflection on the state of the environment," says Berigan. "In Europe, a lack of urban green space and nesting sites are threats. It's likely some of those same factors are at work in North America and contribute to House Sparrow declines here."

Liam A. Berigan et al, Urban House Sparrow (Passer domesticus) populations decline in North America, The Wilson Journal of Ornithology (2021).
https://bioone.org/journals/the-wilson-journal-of-ornithology/volume-132/issue-2/1559-4491-132.2.248/Urban-House-Sparrow-Passer-domesticus-populations-decline-in-North-America/10.1676/1559-4491-132.2.248.short

[vox_mundi]

Increasingly Fragmented Tiger Populations May Require 'Genetic Rescue'
https://phys.org/news/2021-02-increasingly-fragmented-tiger-populations-require.html

"Some populations are well adapted to a future dominated by humans and our new climates and others are not, so any type of management of species should be informed by what we can glean from their genomes," added Hadly, who is also a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. "Conservation genomics is far from a perfect science, but this tiger study hints at the power of adequate sampling across both the species range and its genome."

The study reveals that the world's existing tiger subspecies began exhibiting signs of dramatic and recent contractions starting only around 20,000 years ago—a period that coincided with both the global transition out of the Pleistocene Ice Age and the rise of human dominance in Asia. Each subspecies of tiger the team studied showed unique genomic signatures as a consequence of their increasing isolation from one another.

For example, local environmental genomic adaptation to cold temperatures was found in the Siberian (or Amur) tigers, the northernmost tigers found in the Russian Far East. These adaptations were absent in the other tiger subpopulations studied. Tigers from Sumatra, meanwhile, showed evidence of adaptations for body size regulation, which could help explain their overall smaller size. Despite these adaptations, tigers from these populations have low genetic diversity, suggesting that if populations continue to decline, genetic rescue may need to be considered.

One form that rescue might take is through the mating of different tiger subspecies together as a way of increasing their genetic diversity and protecting against the ill effects of inbreeding. Inbreeding occurs when populations are so small and isolated from other populations that related individuals breed with each other.

Even Bengal tigers from India, which comprise about 70 percent of the world's wild tigers and exhibit relatively high genomic diversity compared to other subspecies, showed signs of inbreeding in some populations, the study concluded.

"Some Bengal tiger populations are essentially small islands surrounded by an inhospitable sea of humanity. These tigers cannot disperse and so have only their close relatives to choose as mates," Hadly said.

Recent evolutionary history of tigers highlights contrasting roles of genetic drift and selection, Molecular Biology and Evolution, (2021)
https://academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-article/doi/10.1093/molbev/msab032/6133235

[kassy]

Extinction: Freshwater fish in 'catastrophic' decline

A report has warned of a "catastrophic" decline in freshwater fish, with nearly a third threatened by extinction.

Conservation groups said 80 species were known to have gone extinct, 16 in the last year alone.

Millions of people rely on freshwater fish for food and as a source of income through angling and the pet trade.

But numbers have plummeted due to pressures including pollution, unsustainable fishing, and the damming and draining of rivers and wetlands.

The report said populations of migratory fish have fallen by three-quarters in the last 50 years.

Over the same time period, populations of larger species, known as "megafish", have crashed by 94%.

The report, The World's Forgotten Fishes, is by 16 conservation groups, including WWF, the London Zoological Society (ZSL), Global Wildlife Conservation and The Nature Conservancy.


https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56160756

[kassy]

“Stark warning”: Combating ecosystem collapse from the tropics to the Antarctic
Eminent scientists warn that key ecosystems around Australia and Antarctica are collapsing, and propose a three-step framework to combat irreversible global damage.

Their report, authored by 38 Australian, UK and US scientists from universities and government agencies, is published today in the international journal Global Change Biology.  Researchers say I heralds a stark warning for ecosystem collapse worldwide, if action if not taken urgently.

Lead author, Dr Dana Bergstrom from the Australian Antarctic Division, said that the project emerged from a conference inspired by her ecological research in polar environments.

“I was seeing unbelievably rapid, widespread dieback in the alpine tundra of World Heritage-listed Macquarie Island and started wondering if this was happening elsewhere,” Dr Bergstrom said.

“With my colleagues from the Australian Antarctic Division and the University of Queensland we organised a national conference and workshop on ‘Ecological Surprises and Rapid Collapse of Ecosystems in a Changing World’, with support from the Australian Academy of Sciences.”

The resulting paper and extensive case studies examine the current state and recent trajectories of 19 marine and terrestrial ecosystems across all Australian states, spanning 58° of latitude from coral reefs to Antarctica. Findings include:

Ecosystem collapse (defined as potentially irreversible change to ecosystem structure, composition and function) is occurring now in 19 case studies. This conclusion is supported by empirical evidence, rather than modelled predictions.

No ecosystems have collapsed across their entire range, but for all case studies there is evidence of local collapse.

The 19 ecosystems include the Great Barrier Reef, mangroves in the Gulf of Carpentaria, the Mediterranean forests and woodlands, the arid zone of central Australia, Shark Bay seagrass beds in Western Australia, Great Southern Reef kelp forests, Gondwanan conifer forests of Tasmania, Mountain Ash forest in Victoria, and moss beds of East Antarctica.

Drivers of ecosystem collapse are pressures from global climate change and regional human impacts, categorised as chronic ‘presses’ (eg. changes in temperature and precipitation, land clearing) or acute ‘pulses’ (eg. heatwaves, storms, fires and pollution after storms).

http://www.exeter.ac.uk/news/research/title_845118_en.html

[Ktb]

I actually received the paper from one of the authors if anybody would like to read it.

[kassy]

Climate change: 'Forever plant' seagrass faces uncertain future

The green, underwater meadows of Posidonia seagrass that surround the Balearic Islands are one of the world's most powerful, natural defences against climate change.

A hectare of this ancient, delicate plant can soak up 15 times more carbon dioxide every year than a similar sized piece of the Amazon rainforest.

But this global treasure is now under extreme pressure from tourists, from development and ironically from climate change.

Posidonia oceanica is found all over the Mediterranean but the area between Mallorca and Formentera is of special interest, having been designated a world heritage site by Unesco over 20 years ago.

Here you'll find around 55,000 hectares of the plant, which helps prevent coastal erosion, acts as a nursery for fish, but also plays a globally significant role in soaking up CO2.

"These seagrass meadows are the champion of carbon sequestration for the biosphere," said Prof Carlos Duarte, of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia.

"Posidonia acts as a very intensive sediment trap and captures carbon into these sediments. It is also very resistant to microbial degradation, so the carbon is not degraded when it's deposited on the sea floor. And much of that stays unaltered during decades to millennia."

Depending on the water temperature, the species reproduces either sexually through flowering or asexually by cloning itself. This ability to clone itself means it can live an extremely long time.

"It's a remarkable plant not only in the capacity to sequester carbon, but also because it's one of the longest-lived organisms on the planet," said Prof Duarte.

"In the marine protected areas of Ibiza we documented one clone where we estimated that the seed that produced that clone was released into the seafloor and sprouted 200,000 years ago."

...

This vivid green carpet that extends under the seas in the Balearics faces an ongoing threat from boats dropping their anchors which crush, tear and destroy the meadows.

One study showed that between 2008 and 2012, Posidonia meadows in Formentera were reduced by 44% because of the impact of anchoring.

The plant also grows extremely slowly.

The damage caused by one yacht's anchor in a single day several years ago would take almost 1,000 years to restore.

Another threat comes from too many nutrients in the waters, caused by effluent released from water treatment sites across the islands.

But perhaps the biggest and most difficult challenge for Posidonia is climate change.

"Posidonia has an upper thermal limit of about 28C," says Dr Marbà.

"I think it's about half of the summers since 2000 that we have exceeded this temperature in the water in the Balearic Islands.

"It doesn't cause massive mortality. But it's excessive for the slow growth of the plant."

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56378397

[gerontocrat]

Beware what comes from left field... Did I hear "whoops" ?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/18/toxic-chemicals-health-humanity-erin-brokovich
Plummeting sperm counts, shrinking penises: toxic chemicals threaten humanity

Erin Brockovich

The end of humankind? It may be coming sooner than we think, thanks to hormone-disrupting chemicals that are decimating fertility at an alarming rate around the globe. A new book called Countdown, by Shanna Swan, an environmental and reproductive epidemiologist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, finds that sperm counts have dropped almost 60% since 1973. Following the trajectory we are on, Swan’s research suggests sperm counts could reach zero by 2045. Zero. Let that sink in. That would mean no babies. No reproduction. No more humans. Forgive me for asking: why isn’t the UN calling an emergency meeting on this right now?

The chemicals to blame for this crisis are found in everything from plastic containers and food wrapping, to waterproof clothes and fragrances in cleaning products, to soaps and shampoos, to electronics and carpeting. Some of them, called PFAS, are known as “forever chemicals”, because they don’t breakdown in the environment or the human body. They just accumulate and accumulate – doing more and more damage, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. Now, it seems, humanity is reaching a breaking point.


Swan’s book is staggering in its findings. “In some parts of the world, the average twentysomething woman today is less fertile than her grandmother was at 35,” Swan writes. In addition to that, Swan finds that, on average, a man today will have half of the sperm his grandfather had. “The current state of reproductive affairs can’t continue much longer without threatening human survival,” writes Swan, adding: “It’s a global existential crisis.” That’s not hyperbole. That’s just science.

As if this wasn’t terrifying enough, Swan’s research finds that these chemicals aren’t just dramatically reducing semen quality, they are also shrinking penis size and volume of the testes. This is nothing short of a full-scale emergency for humanity.

Swan’s book echoes previous research, which has found that PFAS harms sperm production, disrupts the male hormone and is correlated to a “reduction of semen quality, testicular volume and penile length”. These chemicals are literally confusing our bodies, making them send mix messages and go haywire.

Given everything we know about these chemicals, why isn’t more being done? Right now, there is a paltry patchwork of inadequate legislation responding to this threat. Laws and regulations vary from country to country, region to region, and, in the United States, state to state. The European Union, for example, has restricted several phthalates in toys and sets limits on phthalates considered “reprotoxic” – meaning they harm the human reproductive capacities – in food production.

In the United States, a scientific study found phthalate exposure “widespread” in infants, and that the chemicals were found in the urine of babies who came into contact with baby shampoos, lotions and powders. Still, aggressive regulation is lacking, not least because of lobbying by chemical industry giants.

In the state of Washington, lawmakers managed to pass the Pollution Prevention for Our Future Act, which “directs state agencies to address classes of chemicals and moves away from a chemical by chemical approach, which has historically resulted in companies switching to equally bad or worse substitutes. The first chemical classes to be addressed in products include phthalates, PFAS, PCBs, alkyphenol ethoxylate and bisphenol compounds, and organohalogen flame retardants.” The state has taken important steps to address the extent of chemical pollution, but by and large, the United States, like many other countries, is fighting a losing battle because of weak, inadequate legislation.

In the United States today, for example, you can’t eat the deer meat caught in in Oscoda, Michigan, as the health department there issued a “do not eat” advisory for deer caught near the former air force base because of staggeringly high PFOS levels in the muscle of one deer.

And, just the other week, hundreds of residents who live near Luke air force base in Arizona were advised not to drink their water, when tests detected high levels of toxic chemicals. Scientists have found these substances in the blood of nearly all the people they tested in the US. No country or region on earth is untouched by PFAS contamination. It is a global problem. PFAS has been found in every corner of the globe. It is virtually present in the bodies of every human. It’s found in fish deep in the sea, and birds flying high in the sky.

And it’s killing us, literally, by harming and attacking the very source of life: our reproductive capacities. The rapid death and decline of sperm must be addressed, and it must be addressed now. There simply is no time to lose.

[vox_mundi]

^ ... stick with grain alcohol and rain water

[Sebastian Jones]

Re: the Swan and Colino study about plummeting sperm counts etc.
Average sperm counts in western males reaching zero by 2045 is wild. 24 years from now.
We are already at the stage where sperm counts are low enough to affect reproduction.
This could be part of the reason behind the well below replacement rate of reproduction in most of the developed world.
Now, I'm among those who firmly believes that there are several billion too many humans on earth, so this news on its own does not overly disturb me.
However, these chemicals, these long lasting endocrine disrupters, affect most life, and this makes me very sad.
Based on no evidence at all, I hold out hope that should we stop poisoning the planet, natural processes will eventually figure out how to break down these 'forever chemicals'.
If there ever were a post that truly details a looming holocene general extinction, this is it.
More reading:
https://theintercept.com/2021/01/24/toxic-chemicals-human-sexuality-shanna-swan/

[sidd]

Re: by 2045 is wild. 14 years from now.

Wait, what ? As i suspected, i am living further and further in the past.

sidd

[Sebastian Jones]

Right, just came back to fix that, hoping that I could before anyone noticed....
Sigh.

[sidd]

Oh, dont feel too bad. i have made my share of errors too.

But in a larger sense, i think more and more of us are living in the past. We rely on the past to guide us in the future, but even the seasons are uncertain anymore.

sidd

[kassy]

Persistant chemical pollution is one of those other things that are usually too invisible. Of course laws regulating this are complex and the subject matter is technical/boring. So it is mainly the industry writing the laws. Test still look at the effect of the one new chemical in the environment while they should also look at the interactions with all kind of chemicals that are present in the environment.

It´s another one of those problems which industry will not solve itself but since they lobby the politicians the latter won´t do that either.

Not sure if i believe the 0 in western males by 2045 but it is a good way to put it on the agenda because it will become a problem for ´western males´ and thus they might act. (Similar like to how everyone gets worked up over Covid while a little over 8 million death per year by pollution get hardly any attention).

[BeeKnees]

We already know this is a serious problem at the top of the marine foodchain, particularly in the arctic where Polar Bears and seals have incredibly high levels of PCP in their systems. 

Us being a bit less productive is a good thing, but for species on the brink it's disastrous and that should've been the bigger story.   

[kassy]

I disagree but it is a psychology thing. People ´care´ about saving the cuter species but that is mostly on an abstract level which leads to about zero real action so framing this as a human problem might have it´s advantages.

[johnm33]

^ Hormones, around '47 they began to put Oestrogens in dairy cows food mix, this brought them into oestrus a season earlier making them 'more productive'. Some farmers in the UK objected to this forcing and an 'organic' farming movement was born. In the late 60's the hormones, and antibiotics, were still delivered in sacks which the farmers had to shovel into their own food mixer, a very sickly looking farmers son/friend informed me at that time. 
The mother of my eldest 'matured' a full 10 years earlier than her mother and 6years earlier than any of her 3 elder sisters who were born before hostlilities broke out. This was a thing, mothers were lamenting the short duration of their daughters child/girlhoods, [compared to their own] the meme put out for the authority credulous was it was due to the improved nutritional value of the foods available. This flew in the face of experience, where whenever something, bread, ham, sausages etc. was particularly delicious those who had been there said it was like the food before the war. In fact designer food pellets which were so depleted of nutrition that artificial vitamins had to be added were being promoted, these needed milk applied to lubricate their ingestion. Food pellets for animals came much later.
Iirc the consequences of this hormonal assault [volume of family jewels before inflation/sperm count]  have been recalibrated 3 times since '39 much like inflation/rpi and un/employment definitions are.
The few years between 7 and puberty do seem like an error when looked at dispassionately, one would think perhaps the second phase, to acquire all the neccesary adult cultural baggage of a sophisticated society, would be somewhat longer than the first perhaps even twice as long, which is as things once were according to my long since departed familial sources.

[kassy]

YT movie clip removed. Write your own comment or post something with info but not autoloading clips from movies which are some vague reference. It´s wasteful.

[vox_mundi]

Major 'State of the Planet' Report Out In Advance of First Nobel Prize Summit
https://phys.org/news/2021-03-major-state-planet-advance-nobel.html

Human actions are threatening the resilience and stability of Earth's biosphere—the wafer-thin veil around Earth where life thrives. This has profound implications for the development of civilization, say an international group of researchers in a report published for the first Nobel Prize Summit, a digital gathering to be held in April to discuss the state of the planet in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Humanity is now the dominant force of change on planet Earth," according to the analysis published in Ambio, a journal of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

"The risks we are taking are astounding," says co-author Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and co-author of the analysis. "We are at the dawn of what must be a transformative decade. The Nobel Prize Summit is really the scientific community shouting "wake up!"

"In a single human lifetime, largely since the 1950s, we have grossly simplified the biosphere, a system that has evolved over 3.8 billion years. Now, just a few plants and animals dominate the land and oceans," says lead author Carl Folke, director of the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics and chair of the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University. "Our actions are making the biosphere more fragile, less resilient and more prone to shocks than before. Humanity must become effective planetary stewards. About 96% of all mammals by weight are us, H. Sapiens, and our livestock, or cattle, sheep and pigs. Just 4% are wild mammals like elephants, buffalo or dolphins."

The report summarizes recent research on the scale of human activity: "Seventy-five percent of Earth's ice-free land is directly altered as a result of human activity, with nearly 90% of terrestrial net primary production and 80% of global tree cover under direct human influence."

Rising greenhouse gas emissions means that "within the coming 50 years, one to 3 billion people are projected to experience living conditions that are outside of the climate conditions that have served civilizations well over the past 6,000 years," depending on how population and climate scenarios play out, according to the report's summary.

... Two of the biggest barriers are unsustainable levels of inequality and technology that undermines societal goals. ...

Carl Folke et al, Our future in the Anthropocene biosphere, Ambio (2021).
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13280-021-01544-8

[vox_mundi]

Half of Guadeloupe's Snakes and Lizards Went Extinct After European Colonization
https://phys.org/news/2021-05-guadeloupe-snakes-lizards-extinct-european.html

A new study led by Dr. Corentin Bochaton and Professor Nicole Boivin of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, reveals far greater extinctions among the snakes and lizards of Guadeloupe following European colonization than previously believed. Partnering with colleagues from Center National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle (MNHN), Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD) and the Institut National de Recherche pour l'Agriculture, l'Alimentation et l'Environnement (INRAE), the team studied an extraordinary 43,000 individual bone remains from fossil and archaeological assemblages on six islands, ultimately revealing that 50% to 70% of Guadeloupe's squamate species went extinct after the arrival of European colonialists.

This enormous loss of biodiversity stands in stark contrast to the pre-colonial record, which shows that Indigenous populations co-existed with the islands' snakes and lizards for thousands of years. In fact, the biodiversity of Guadeloupe's snakes and lizards actually increased during the long history of Indigenous habitation, with no recorded extinctions and the introduction of two new lizard species.

"The long-term data from Guadeloupe are concerning," notes Professor Boivin, Director of the Department of Archaeology at the MPI in Jena. "Snakes and lizards persisted through a broad range of climatic, environmental and human-induced changes on Guadeloupe over thousands of years. They do not appear to be sensitive animals. Yet in the last few hundred years, their diversity has plummeted."

... The use of fossil data from Guadeloupe allowed the team to closely examine the dynamics of the extinctions, revealing links between species' body size, habitat preference, and risk of extinction. Medium-sized, terrestrial species sustained the greatest losses, implicating recently introduced mammalian predators such as mongooses and cats as primary drivers in Guadeloupe's reptile extinctions.

The extinction trends also highlight the impacts of a shift to intensive colonial agriculture. The destruction and fragmentation of habitats, combined with the degradation of soil and decimation of insect populations, placed enormous pressure on Guadeloupe's snake and lizard species

C. Bochaton el al., "Large-scale reptile extinctions following European colonization of the Guadeloupe Islands," Science Advances (2021)
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/21/eabg2111

[Reallybigbunny]

Wow - Arctic wildlife face dramatic decline. A drastic drop in caribou and shorebird populations is a reflection of the dire changes unfolding on the Arctic tundra, according to a new report from the Arctic Council.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/20/climate-crisis-drastic-drop-arctic-wildlife-populations-aoe