Rewilding the Arctic can slow the climate crisis

Climate News Network

January 29, 2020
Releasing herds of large animals onto the tundra − rewilding the Arctic − to create vast grasslands could slow down global heating by storing carbon and preserving the permafrost, UK scientists say.

With no woolly mammoths available nowadays, the scientists, from the University of Oxford, suggest an alternative in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B − importing large herds of bison and horses to provide the mega-fauna that would prevent tree growth and create huge areas of grazing land.

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Temperatures at a Florida-Size Glacier in Antarctica Alarm Scientists

The New York Times

January 29, 2020
Scientists in Antarctica have recorded, for the first time, unusually warm water beneath a glacier the size of Florida that is already melting and contributing to a rise in sea levels.

The researchers, working on the Thwaites Glacier, recorded water temperatures at the base of the ice of more than 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, above the normal freezing point.

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Trust our expertise or face catastrophe, Amazon peoples warn on environment

The Guardian

January 28, 2020
Ecosystems will continue to collapse around the world unless humanity listens to the expertise of indigenous communities on how to live alongside nature, a prominent Amazon leader has warned.

Tuntiak Katan of the Ecuadorian Shuar people, who is vice-president of the pan-Amazon organisation representing communities in the river basin, said governments were spending millions of dollars on environmental consultants while largely ignoring the land management skills of the planet’s indigenous people that could help combat the climate crisis and biodiversity loss.

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Rethinking land conservation to protect species that will need to move with climate change

Phys.org

January 28, 2020
All plants and animals need suitable conditions to survive. That means a certain amount of light, a tolerable temperature range, and access to sources of food, water and shelter. Many of the existing efforts to protect plant and animal species across the United States rely on information about where these species currently live.

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Climate change mitigation and nature conservation both require higher protected area targets

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B - Opinion

January 27, 2020
Nations of the world have, to date, pursued nature protection and climate change mitigation and adaptation policies separately. Both efforts have failed to achieve the scale of action needed to halt biodiversity loss or mitigate climate change. […] A new target of 30% of the sea given high levels of protection from exploitation and harm by 2030 is under consideration and similar targets are being discussed for terrestrial habitats. We make the case here that these higher targets, if achieved, would make the transition to a warmer world slower and less damaging for nature and people.

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Preserving ecological balance is crucial for us

The Times of India - Editorial

January 25, 2020
Our planet has suffered five mass extinctions, the last of which occurred about 66 million years ago, when a giant asteroid believed to have landed near the Yucatan Peninsula set off a chain reaction that wiped out the dinosaurs and roughly three-quarters of the other species on earth. A few years ago, in a book called The Sixth Extinction, the writer Elizabeth Kolbert warned of a devastating sequel, with plant and animal species on land and sea already disappearing at a ferocious clip, their habitats destroyed by human activities.

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The business of nature

National Geographic

January 24, 2020
Business as usual isn’t working for the planet. Human-driven activities, such as deforestation and overfishing, have put one million species at risk of extinction, according to a ground-breaking 2019 United Nations report. The report is a thunderous wake-up call for the world on the need to make protecting nature job No. 1.

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Catastrophic Amazon tipping point less than 30 years away: study

Mongabay

January 23, 2020
One of the most important questions Amazon scientists are asking today is, how much deforestation and global climate change can this tropical biome tolerate before rainfall is drastically reduced — forcing a rainforest-to-savanna conversion, and releasing huge amounts of stored forest carbon into the atmosphere in the process?

A recent study tried to answer that question. The findings: the Amazon basin could be less than 30 years from a catastrophic collapse that would turn it into a dry savanna, according to a study published in the journal One Earth.

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Canada working towards new future for Indigenous-led conservation

Mongabay

January 23, 2020
Indigenous people currently manage or have tenure on 40% of the world’s protected areas and remaining intact ecosystems. The deep connection to land and water that characterizes Indigenous cultures around the world suggests a natural alliance with conservationists working to protect those places.

But, as the authors of a recent paper in Biological Conservation argue, realizing this potential requires rethinking past approaches to conservation and ensuring that Indigenous people have substantive decision-making roles regarding their territories.

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