How we can protect irrecoverable carbon in Earth’s ecosystems

The Weather Network

April 22, 2020
Earth Day is celebrated each year on April 22 and this year marks the 50th anniversary since the campaign first launched. The event encourages increased awareness of the environment as well as actions and commitments that will reduce the negative impacts humans have on the planet.

Fighting climate change is central to Earth Day and some of the actions that the campaign recommends include using less electricity, taking public transit or walking instead of driving and other choices that reduce our carbon footprint. In addition to these individual behaviours, climate scientists say that more conservation efforts are needed to ensure that ecosystems can continue absorbing the large amount of carbon dioxide that we release.

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Reflecting on the 50th Earth Day During a Time of Crisis: Lessons for Our Future

Medium

April 22, 2020
Across the United States, 20 million people of all ages and backgrounds united on April 22, 1970 to protect our planet and build an environmental movement from the ground up to chart a cleaner, healthier, and more sustainable future. The people who lent their voices to the first Earth Day created a groundswell of political change that helped establish the Environmental Protection Agency and enact bedrock conservation laws like the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. Parents demanded change for their children, children demanded change for their future — and progress was won.

It was during this time that my father, former Interior Secretary Stewart Udall, sounded the alarm about the creeping destruction of nature — what he termed ‘The Quiet Crisis.’

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Earth Day: Reimagining our Relationship with Nature

Campaign For Nature

April 22, 2020
Today, as the world celebrates the 50th Earth Day, individuals and leaders around the world are reimagining our relationship with nature. There is a growing recognition that the accelerating destruction of nature is contributing to the major challenges of our time: climate change, mass wildlife extinction, and more clearly than ever this year, the spread of infectious diseases.

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How we can protect irrecoverable carbon in Earth’s ecosystems

The Weather Network

April 21, 2020
Scientists say that more conservation efforts are needed to ensure that ecosystems can continue absorbing large amounts of carbon dioxide.

Earth Day is celebrated each year on April 22 and this year marks the 50th anniversary since the campaign first launched. The event encourages increased awareness of the environment as well as actions and commitments that will reduce the negative impacts humans have on the planet.

Read More

climate change, conservation, ecosystem services, natural climate solutionsGuest Usercarbon, conservation, natural climate solutions, ecosystem services
Anchor new future in nature, wildlife society says

Herald Live

April 20, 2020
We need to start creating a “new normal” that lets us live within nature and not at its expense.

That’s the call from the Algoa Bay branch of the Wildlife and Environment Society of SA (Wessa), which was responding on Sunday to recent statements by the World Economic Forum and heavyweight collective Campaign for Nature on the coronavirus and the G20’s post-pandemic restructuring plans.

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nature, economy, Covid-19, Campaign for NatureGuest Usernature, wildlife, Campaign for Nature, economy, G20, Covid-19
Coronavirus: Fears of spike in poaching as pandemic poverty strikes

BBC

April 16, 2020
Conservation groups say nature must be a cornerstone of economic recovery plans for the sake of people, health and economies.

The call comes amid fears of a "spike in poaching" as rural communities lose vital income.

In Cambodia, 1% of the entire population of one critically endangered bird was wiped out in a single event.

The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) said three of only a few hundred remaining giant ibis were poisoned.

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conservation, Covid-19, natureGuest UserCovid-19, wildlife, illegal wildlife trade, pandemics, Campaign for Nature, conservation
The heroic effort in the Amazon to save the world’s largest eagle

National Geographic

April 10, 2020
[…] As top predators, harpy eagles play a crucial ecological role, keeping populations of prey species in check; their presence in a forest is indicative of a healthy, functioning environment. No one knows how many remain in the wild, but scientists do know that they’re disappearing. The giant raptors once lived from southern Mexico to northern Argentina, but since the 19th century their range has declined by nearly half, leaving the Amazon with 93 percent of the species’ remaining occupied habitat. Deforestation—the primary threat to harpy eagles’ survival—shows no signs of slowing. Last year, the world watched as massive tracts of the Amazon went up in flames, and right now 45 acres of Brazilian Amazon are being razed every hour.

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conservation, extinction, habitat protection, Indigenous people, success story, wildlifeGuest Userwildlife, habitat protection, extinction, conservation, Brazil, Indigenous peoples
Great Barrier Reef suffers third mass bleaching event in five years

CNN

April 7, 2020
Australia's Great Barrier Reef has experienced its most widespread bleaching event on record, with the south of the reef bleaching extensively for the first time, a new survey has found.

This marks the third mass bleaching event on the reef in just the last five years and scientists say that the rapid warming of the planet due to human emissions of heat-trapping gases are to blame.

Aerial analysis conducted by Terry Hughes, director of the ARC Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University, and others from the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, found that coastal reefs along the entire length of the iconic reef -- a stretch of about 1,500 miles (2,300 kilometers) from the Torres Strait in the north, right down to the reef's southern boundary -- have been severely bleached.

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biodiversity loss, coral reefs, habitat destruction, oceansGuest UserGreat Barrier Reef, coral reefs, coral bleaching, marine biodiversity, biodiversity loss, oceans, Australia
UN biodiversity chief calls for international ban of 'wet markets'

The Hill

April 6, 2020
The United Nations's acting head of biodiversity is calling for a global prohibition of so-called wet markets where live and dead wild animals are kept in cages and sold for human consumption. 

Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, the acting executive secretary of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity, told The Guardian in an interview published Monday that “the message we are getting is if we don’t take care of nature, it will take care of us." 

The comments came as officials around the world ramp up their calls for countries such as China to crack down on wildlife markets that are believed to play a leading role in the spread of infectious diseases.

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Covid-19, human health, wildlifeGuest UserCovid-19, wet markets ban, illegal wildlife trade, human health
When biodiversity fails, human health is on the line­­

African Arguments

April 6, 2020
The rapid rise of disease caused by a new coronavirus seems to have caught much of the world by surprise. It shouldn’t have. An upsurge in the emergence of new infectious diseases started at least 30 years before this virus appeared. Some of these diseases have been transmitted from wild animals to humans, and the spread of COVID-19 appears to have originated in a market selling dead and living wildlife, including some endangered species. Research also shows that many of the most serious outbreaks – including Ebola, and the Zika and Nipah viruses – have been linked to biodiversity loss, and to deforestation in particular.

Both of us governed nations in West Africa through the Ebola crisis of 2014-2016. We served at the helm of the governments of Sierra Leone and Liberia, two countries hit hardest by that crisis which sickened more than 28,600 people and killed more than 11,300. The epidemic also cost our region an estimated $53 billion. Our health systems and economies are still recovering.

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Covid-19, biodiversity loss, human health, natureGuest UserCovid-19, biodiversity loss, human health, pandemics
In a bleak year, the natural world stirs hope

The Washington Post

April 4, 2020
[…] In the current crisis, the news of people flocking to parks and preserves in Illinois and around the country and the world — even, sadly, as more of those open spaces are being shut daily — seems completely logical. Nature offers balm to wounded hearts, peace to troubled thoughts, light and life that outshine the darkness and gloom of the daily news. Just this week, I received a message from a good friend in China including photographs of Japanese waxwings, an elegant bird species. She told me what joy they brought her. Another friend, this one local, sent a photo of a crayfish he had found with scores of tiny offspring on its belly. Many others have shared such natural discoveries.

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Marine life in the world's oceans can recover to healthy levels by 2050, researchers say

CNN

April 2, 2020
Marine life in the world's oceans could recover to healthy levels in the next thirty years if decisive and urgent action is taken, an international review has found.

A team of scientists from around the world found marine life to be "remarkably resilient" despite damage caused by human activity and interference, they said in a review published Wednesday in science journal Nature.

Researchers said ocean populations could be restored as soon as 2050, but warned that there is limited time to achieve this change.

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habitat restoration, marine protection, oceans, ocean managementGuest Usermarine biodiversity, oceans, conservation, restoration