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Next year will see an important meeting to agree global biodiversity targets, but the UK says it won’t be publishing key data on wildlife and habitats

Lulworth skipper butterfly — A male Lulworth skipper (Thymelicus acteon) in Dorset, UK. Oliver Smart/Alamy

Conservationists and politicians have criticised the UK government for its decision to temporarily stop publishing new data on the state of the country’s wildlife and habitats in 2022, the same year as a landmark UN biodiversity summit.

Figures published today by the Department for Food, Rural Affairs & Environment (Defra) show a deteriorating picture for habitats, as well as for priority species, such as otters and red squirrels; woodland birds and butterflies that are reliant on specific habitats, such as the Lulworth skipper (Thymelicus acteon).

The UK, like many other countries, has failed to arrest declines in biodiversity in recent years despite signing up to global targets to protect nature. In April 2022, nations are expected to renew their commitment to act by agreeing new biodiversity targets for 2030 at the COP15 summit in Kunming, China.

However, Defra said that it will “pause” publishing new data on the state of UK biodiversity in 2022 to enable a “thorough review” of the indicators, such as the pressures from invasive species or the health of bird populations and other animals. Publication will not resume until 2023.

Mark Avery, a conservationist and former conservation director of the UK’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, says: “It seems like Defra’s response to a biodiversity crisis is to stop publishing the data that show it’s happening. That’s not very good, is it?”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Soils and Life Beneath the Ground

November 1, 2021

Soils and Life Beneath the Ground

There is more life beneath the ground than you know. Healthy soils contain a vibrant range of life forms such as protozoa, nematodes, mites, springtails, spiders, insects, bacteria, fungi, earthworms and numerous burrowing animals. This rich biodiversity plays a vital role in mitigating climate change, neutralising pests, purifying and storing water, providing antibiotics and preventing soil erosion. The well-being of all people, plants and animals depends on the complex processes that take place in soil. One square meter of soil can harbour as many as one billion organisms. Soils are home to over a quarter of all living creatures on Earth.

Soils - life beneath the ground

In the context of a human life span, soil is not normally renewable. Healthy ecosystems constantly recycle and generate fresh water and air. Soil formation however takes decades or even centuries to occur. Human activity has polluted the air and severely degraded most freshwater habitats. The ability of ecosystems to produce clean air and water has been impaired. The Earth’s healthy soils are also under attack. Intensive farming destroys the soil’s natural regenerative properties and makes it entirely dependent on artificial fertilisers. Modern industrial farming practices transform previously fertile soils into dust.

Soil quality and fertility depends on the presence of a vast biodiversity of underground living organisms. This community of creatures processes dead organic matter to produce nutrient-rich complex organic matter, called humus. Humus is necessary to sustain plants. Humus cannot be man-made. It is created by soil biodiversity. Micro-organisms play a major role in processing the organic matter in soil. Soil is the most essential food source on the planet. It provides the nutrients that plants need to grow and sustain animals, as well as produce our own food and textile fibers.

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Unrelenting economic growth on a finite planet is laying waste to entire living systems

October 7, 2021

Unrelenting economic growth on a finite planet is laying waste to entire living systems

Meanwhile, governments everywhere are talking about “supercharging our economy.” —

No 2784 by fw, October 5, 2021—

George Monbiot

“There is a box labelled ‘climate’, in which politicians discuss the climate crisis. There is a box named ‘biodiversity’, in which they discuss the biodiversity crisis. There are plenty of other boxes, such as pollution, deforestation, overfishing and soil loss, gathering dust in our planet’s lost property department. But all these boxes contain aspects of one crisis, that we have divided up to make it comprehensible. The categories the human brain creates to make sense of its surroundings are not, as Immanuel Kant observed, the Thing-in-Itself. They describe perceptual artefacts, rather than the world. Nature recognizes no such divisions. As Earth systems are assaulted by everything at once, each source of stress compounds the others…. What would we see if we broke down our conceptual barriers? We would see a full spectrum assault on the living world. Scarcely anywhere is now safe from this sustained assault. A recent scientific paper estimates that only 3% of the Earth’s land surface should now be considered ‘ecologically intact’. …We have no hope of emerging from this full-spectrum crisis unless we ramp down economic activity. Wealth must be distributed – a constrained world cannot afford the rich – but it must also be reduced. Sustaining our life-support systems means doing less of almost everything. But this notion – which should be central to a new, environmental ethics – is secular blasphemy.” —George Monbiot

George Joshua Richard Monbiot is a British writer known for his environmental and political activism. He writes a weekly column for The Guardian, and is the author of a number of books.

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Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future

August 28, 2021

Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future

Preface. This is another “Scientists Warnings to Humanity” by many famous scientists, including Paul & Anne Erlich, John Harte, Peter Raven, and Mathis Wackernagel.

Some of the challenges they point to are loss of biodiversity and consequent 6th mass extinction, human population growth which has led to ecological overshoot and overconsumption, climate change and consequent mass migrations. They conclude there will be mass extinction, declining health, and war over resources and many other grim consequences.

Unfortunately this important message is once again energy blind. It does mention that ecological overshoot is due to fossil fuels, but neglects to mention that peak oil happened in 2018 or 2008 and peak coal probably 2013, so they assume we will continue on our current population trajectory until the 22nd century! And they assume the worst about climate change as well by not acknowledging that there is a limit to fossil energy and since oil is naturally declining at 8.5% a year, offset by 4% enhanced oil recovery with little discovery of new oil the past 7 years, we may well have only half or less oil remaining by 2030. And a dieoff of billions of people, and 50% less CO2 emissions. Why peak fossils are ignored I can’t imagine, they are very aware of limits to growth.

In the end this is a shout out to their colleagues to be more honest:
“…only a realistic appreciation of the colossal challenges facing the international community might allow it to chart a less-ravaged future. While there have been more recent calls for the scientific community in particular to be more vocal about their warnings to humanity, these have been insufficiently foreboding to match the scale of the crisis…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Population explosion to destroy 11% of remaining ecosystems and biodiversity

June 27, 2021

Population explosion to destroy 11% of remaining ecosystems and biodiversity

Preface. According to a recent paper in Nature Sustainability (Williams et al 2020), we are on the verge of destroying 11% of earth’s remaining ecosystems by 2050 to grow more food. We already are using 75% of Earth’s land. What a species! Reminds me of the ecology phrase “Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?”

But I have several criticisms of this research.

Proposed remedies include increasing crop yields, but we are at peak food, so that isn’t going to happen. We are also at peak pesticides, as we are running out of new toxic chemicals and pests adapt within five years on average. The second idea is to have homo sapiens stop eating meat and adopt a plant-based diet. As long as meat is available and affordable, that simply won’t happen. The third way is to cut food waste or loss. That would require all of us to live in dire poverty given human nature, and then we’d all chop away at the remaining wild lands to grow more food. And finally, the 4^th solution would be to export food to the nations that are going to destroy the most creatures and forests. Which in turn would lead to expanding populations in these regions. Malthus was right about food being the only limitation on population. And it would be difficult to export food when there are 83 million more mouths to feed every year globally.

This research article doesn’t even mention family planning and birth control as a solution.

Or point out the huge increase in greenhouse gases that would be emitted. From “Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy”: The idea that biofuels generate less CO₂ than gasoline stems from the fact that biofuels are derived from plants that absorb carbon dioxide…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Páramos at Risk: The Interconnected Threats to a Biodiversity Hotspot

May 13, 2021

On a recent, pre-pandemic journey to the High Andes of Colombia, I found myself surrounded by one of the region’s emblematic species, the flowering shrubs known locally as frailejones or “big monks.” These giant plants, relatives of sunflowers from the Espeletia genus, mesmerized me, their yellow buds and silvery hairs glistening in the intense, ephemeral sunlight.

Looking out over the vast, rolling landscape, I wondered how such a stunning, incomparable ecosystem can be taken for granted.

I’d accompanied National University of Colombia agricultural scientist Jairo Cuervo, that day, to Sumapaz — about 25 miles (40 km) southwest of Bogotá — to better understand the impacts of an expanding agricultural frontier on rich páramo soils.

Sumapaz is the world’s largest páramo — a type of high-altitude moorland ecosystem found in the South and Central American neotropics that functions as a sort of sponge, efficiently absorbing and storing rainwater and moisture into its vegetation and rich soils. The water is then released slowly and steadily, which is particularly important in dry seasons. Sumapaz and the nearby Chingaza páramo, for example, provide most of the water for the entire Bogotá savanna.

Páramos, experts say, may also serve as a sort of buffer against climate-change-induced recession of tropical mountain glaciers and extended droughts — if we can protect them.

Cuervo pointed to a potato farm and some grazing cows in the distance, where they’d taken over from the native vegetation. “Despite the páramo providing us with water to live, they are largely forgotten, neglected and at terrible risk,” he says.

Agriculture is just one of many interconnected pressures threatening these unique ecosystems and the people and wildlife who depend on them.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Agroforestry: An ancient practice with a promising future?

May 10, 2021

Agroforestry: An ancient practice with a promising future?

How are we going to tackle agriculture’s enormous contribution to the climate and biodiversity crises? One of the few things everyone agrees on is that it won’t be easy, and part of the reason for this is the huge amount of disagreement around the viability and sustainability of many of the proposed solutions. Moving to faster-growing breeds of livestock, for example, could risk delivering carbon gains at the expense of biodiversity and animal welfare. There are, however, some measures with more universal support, and one of the most potentially significant of these is agroforestry.

Traditionally defined as the growing of commercially productive trees and agricultural crops on the same piece of land, agroforestry is, despite its new-found fame, a very old practice – though one which has sadly been almost entirely lost from our landscape. In contrast to the prevailing mindset around trees and food production, which largely sees these two land uses as mutually exclusive, agroforestry systems are designed in a way that provides benefits to both enterprises, while also generating a range of environmental gains such as improved soil health, reduced runoff, increased biodiversity – and of course, carbon sequestration.

It’s no wonder, then, that agroforestry has received widespread support from many different quarters over recent years. But with a range of different possible approaches and few on-the-ground practitioners, what might its implementation at scale actually look like? Thanks to the pioneering work of the likes of Stephen Briggs and his alley cropping system of apples and cereals, we have proven models that show how agroforestry can work on cropland. But with the exception of some research trials carried out in the 1980s, there has, as far as I’m aware, been very little research done into how agroforestry might be best implemented in grassland areas…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How to Turn Your Backyard Into a Certified Wildlife Habitat

November 4, 2020

How to Turn Your Backyard Into a Certified Wildlife Habitat

Climate change continues to alter the planet and make it less suitable for sustaining life. Animals have felt this effect more than anyone else. As people look for new locations to build safer, more weather-proof cities, wildlife species have retreated to the minimal spaces still left intact.

Humans can do their part to mitigate the current mass extinction of animals and insects. Before you visit a zoo, consider transforming your property into a better home for creatures in need.

This is how you can turn your backyard into a certified wildlife habitat. Your backyard may currently have features that hurt the environment or prevent animals from roaming through or living safely. Use these tips and you’ll join the effort to save numerous species the food chain depends upon.

1. Ensure a Food Supply

Nothing can live without a steady supply of food. You’ll have to think of a way to ensure constant food that local wildlife can eat.

First, you should research where you live. Read about which animals thrive in your neighbourhood or migrate through your town. Think about whether your area interacts with creatures like:

Birds
Butterflies
Deer
Rabbits
Squirrels

Even some animals like bears, which don’t necessarily pose a safety threat, can find refuge in your homemade habitat if they first find access to food.

2. Provide Shelter

Bird Box — Image by Sabine Löwer from Pixabay

Animals want to feel safe, both for themselves and their potential offspring. Habitats must always include shelter for these purposes. You might hang a few birdhouses and bat houses on your trees or nestle a lizard shelter from a pet store next to your garden.

Don’t worry about needing a big budget for this step. It’s great to build or buy extra shelters, but animals will also appreciate leafy bushes and trees.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Ransomware attacks and biodiversity: A possible lesson from nature

November 2, 2020

Ransomware attacks and biodiversity: A possible lesson from nature

As I read about recent ransomware attacks on hospitals, I was reminded of a seemingly unremarkable event years ago when I was still using a computer with the Windows operating system. I was working with a medical doctor turned medical IT specialist. His preferred operating system—though not that of the hospitals he worked for—was the one on his Apple computer. When he loaded files from a flash drive onto his machine in my presence, I asked why he didn’t check for viruses first. He had a one-word answer: biodiversity.

He was, of course, using the metaphor of biodiversity to refer to the fact that the vast majority of computer viruses and malware targeted Windows systems at that time, something that is still true today. Very few threats targeted the Apple operating system, and because of its design the system was (and is) more resistant to such attacks.

Every student of biology—which naturally includes doctors and health care workers—ought to be aware of the advantages of biodiversity in natural systems. Biodiversity brings resilience to species and to entire ecosystems. Variations in members of a species make it more likely that some will survive to propagate. Variations across species that inhabit an ecosystem make it more likely that the system will survive as a coherent unit when some, but not all of a particular species die out.

Of course, computer networks are not biological systems (unless you include the human operators). But they suffer some of the same obvious vulnerabilities. When you look at the share of operating systems worldwide for all platforms there appears to be at least some diversity with two major systems, Android and Windows vying for first place.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Fifth Of Countries Worldwide At-Risk Of “Environmental Shocks” Collapsing Ecosystem

October 15, 2020

Fifth Of Countries Worldwide At-Risk Of “Environmental Shocks” Collapsing Ecosystem

The reinsurer said more than half of global GDP, equal to about $41.7 trillion, is highly dependent on “high-functioning biodiversity and ecosystem services” and warns 20% of countries are nearing tipping points.

Swiss Re Institute’s new Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Index (BES), built on ten critical ecosystem services (water security, timber provision, food provision, habitat intactness, pollination, soil fertility, water quality, regulation of air quality and local climate, erosion control and coastal protection), offers government officials and business leaders with a more enhanced view into their local ecosystems that are so critical to their economies. Reinsurers can use BES to develop insurance solutions that protect communities at risk from biodiversity loss.

Among G20 economies, South Africa, India, Turkey, Mexico, and Italy had the highest shares of fragile ecosystems within the BES index. Meanwhile, countries, including Germany, Canada, Indonesia, Brazil, and the United Kingdom, had very low percentages of their ecosystems in a fragile state.

Global BES Index Map

BES Index Ranking G20 Countries

Christian Mumenthaler, Swiss Re’s Group Chief Executive Officer, said: “This important piece of work provides a data-driven foundation for understanding the economic risks of deteriorating biodiversity and ecosystems. In turn, we can inform governmental decision-making to help improve ecosystem restoration and preservation.”

“We can also support corporations and investors as they fortify themselves against environmental shocks. Armed with this information, we can also ensure the provision of stronger sustainable insurance services,” Mumenthaler said.

One example Swiss Re said is that certain developing and developed countries were at risk for water scarcity issues, which could damage manufacturing sectors, properties, and supply chains. The domino effect of biodiversity loss could have on economies is catastrophic if nothing is done.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Do Weeds Matter for Biodiversity?

October 14, 2020

Do Weeds Matter for Biodiversity?

Weeds. A very negative-sounding word for many. However, weeds might not exactly be what we used to think they are. Let me take you on a walk in the countryside, observing fields of barley as we pass them by. In the meanwhile, let’s explore who weeds really are. Let’s find out: do weeds matter for biodiversity? And how much?

I bet only few of you have ever seen a field as the one on the picture. Even as an attentive observer of the farmlands around me, I haven’t seen such a colourful cereal-field before, until I saw this one at my faculty of agricultural sciences. At this test plot, no herbicides have been applied, allowing the weeds to come to full bloom in summer. Maybe those from the older generation will remember such blooming fields from the time when they were young, but it has become a rare sight nowadays.

Barley field full of blooming weeds. Photo by Naomi Bosch

While the flowers are exceptionally beautiful to look at, this is not an homage to the good old times, when “everything used to be better”. Neither does this text mean to condemn all the farmers of the world who do apply pesticides. In fact, its purpose is to strike up a debate about flowers, bread, bees and biodiversity. About who is and who isn’t paying the cost for the cornflowers and poppies we don’t see around us anymore.

Unwanted weeds

There is no doubt that the blue and red spots of flowers in the field of cereals on the picture are a pretty sight. But this doesn’t change the fact that those are weeds. Weeds are any plants that grow on the field along with a crop, that haven’t been sown there intentionally.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How our food choices cut into forests and put us closer to viruses

August 29, 2020

How our food choices cut into forests and put us closer to viruses

As the global population has doubled to 7.8 billion in about 50 years, industrial agriculture has increased the output from fields and farms to feed humanity. One of the negative outcomes of this transformation has been the extreme simplification of ecological systems, with complex multi-functional landscapes converted to vast swaths of monocultures.

From cattle farming to oil palm plantations, industrial agriculture remains the greatest driver of deforestation, particularly in the tropics. And as agricultural activities expand and intensify, ecosystems lose plants, wildlife and other biodiversity.

The permanent transformation of forested landscapes for commodity crops currently drives more than a quarter of all global deforestation. This includes soy, palm oil, beef cattle, coffee, cocoa, sugar and other key ingredients of our increasingly simplified and highly processed diets.

The erosion of the forest frontier has also increased our exposure to infectious diseases, such as Ebola, malaria and other zoonotic diseases. Spillover incidents would be far less prevalent without human encroachment into the forest.

We need to examine our global food system: Is it doing its job, or is it contributing to forest destruction and biodiversity loss — and putting human life at risk?

What are we eating?

The food most associated with biodiversity loss also tends to also be connected to unhealthy diets across the globe. Fifty years after the Green Revolution — the transition to intensive, high yielding food production reliant on a limited number of crop and livestock species — nearly 800 million people still go to bed hungry; one in three is malnourished; and up to two billion people suffer some sort of micronutrient deficiency and associated health impacts, such as stunting or wasting.

Forest cut down for an agricultural field — A large soy field cuts into the forest in Brazil. (Shutterstock)

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Human over-consumption causes far more biodiversity loss than climate change

June 10, 2020

Human over-consumption causes far more biodiversity loss than climate change

Preface. Human ancestors began reducing biodiversity 4 million years ago, when large carnivores in Africa began disappearing, probably due to our ancestors stealing food predators had caught, starving them to death and eventually driving some of them extinct (Faurby, S., et al. 2020. Brain expansion in early hominins predicts carnivore extinctions in East Africa. Ecology Letters.)

***

2016-8-13. Climate change isn’t the biggest danger to Earth’s wildlife, our thirst for natural resources is even more damaging

2016-8-10 “Biodiversity: The ravages of guns, nets, and bulldozers” Nature)

Even though climate change is going to have a very powerful impact on plants and wildlife world-wide, climate change has also become a scape-goat, with a “growing tendency for media reports about threats to biodiversity to focus on climate change.”

But scientists have found that over-exploitation, including logging, hunting, fishing and the gathering of plants is the biggest single killer of biodiversity, directly impacting 72% of the 8,688 species listed as threatened or near-threatened by the IUCN. Agricultural activity comes second, affecting 62% of those species, followed by urban development at 35% and pollution at 22%. Species such as the African cheetah and Asia’s hairy-noes otter are among the 5,407 species that find themselves threatened by agricultural practices, while illegal hunting impacts several populations such as the Sumatran rhino and African elephant.

Climate change on the other hand comes in on a surprising, if somewhat unimpressive, 7th place in the 11 threats identified by the team. Even when you combine all its effects, it currently threatens just 19% of the species on the list, the team reports. Species such as the hooded seal, which the team reports has seen a population decline of 90% in the northeastern Atlantic Arctic over the past few decades as a result of declining ice cover, are part of the 1,688 species directly impacted by climate change.

One million plant & animal species at risk of extinction

September 3, 2019

One million plant & animal species at risk of extinction

As usual, no mention of birth control or carrying capacity.

Plumer, B. 2019. Humans Are Speeding Extinction and Altering the Natural World at an ‘Unprecedented’ Pace. New York Times.

Extinction rates are tens to hundreds of times higher than they have been in the past 10 million years.

Over the past 50 years, global biodiversity loss has primarily been driven by activities like the clearing of forests for farmland, the expansion of roads and cities, logging, hunting, overfishing, water pollution and the transport of invasive species around the globe.

All told, three-quarters of the world’s land area has been significantly altered by people, the report found, and 85 percent of the world’s wetlands have vanished since the 18th century.

Humans are transforming Earth’s natural landscapes so dramatically that as many as one million plant and animal species are now at risk of extinction, posing a dire threat to ecosystems that people all over the world depend on for their survival, a sweeping new United Nations assessment has concluded.

The 1,500-page report, compiled by hundreds of international experts and based on thousands of scientific studies, is the most exhaustive look yet at the decline in biodiversity across the globe and the dangers that creates for human civilization.

Its conclusions are stark. In most major land habitats, from the savannas of Africa to the rain forests of South America, the average abundance of native plant and animal life has fallen by 20 percent or more, mainly over the past century. With the human population passing 7 billion, activities like farming, logging, poaching, fishing and mining are altering the natural world at a rate “unprecedented in human history.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Fake Food, Fake Meat: Big Food’s Desperate Attempt to Further the Industrialisation of Food

June 21, 2019

Fake Food, Fake Meat: Big Food’s Desperate Attempt to Further the Industrialisation of Food

Photograph Source: Mattes – CC BY-SA

The ontology and ecology of food

Food is not a commodity, it is not “stuff” put together mechanically and artificially in labs and factories. Food is life. Food holds the contributions of all beings that make the food web, and it holds the potential of maintaining and regenerating the web of life. Food also holds the potential for health and disease, depending on how it was grown and processed. Food is therefore the living currency of the web of life.

As an ancient Upanishad reminds us “Everything is food, everything is something else’s food. “

Good Food and Real Food are the basis of health .

Bad food, industrial food, fake food is the basis of disease.

Hippocrates said “Let food be thy medicine”. In Ayurveda, India’s ancient science of life, food is called “sarvausadha” the medicine that cures all disease.

Industrial food systems have reduced food to a commodity, to “stuff” that can then be constituted in the lab. In the process both the planet’s health and our health has been nearly destroyed.

75% of the planetary destruction of soil, water, biodiversity, and 50% of greenhouse gas emissions come from industrial agriculture, which also contributes to 75% of food related chronic diseases. It contributes 50% of the GHG’s driving Climate Change. Chemical agriculture does not return organic matter and fertility to the soil. Instead it is contributing to desertification and land degradation. It also demands more water since it destroys the soil’s natural water-holding capacity. Industrial food systems have destroyed the biodiversity of the planet both through the spread of monocultures, and through the use of toxics and poisons which are killing bees, butterflies, insects, birds, leading to the sixth mass extinction.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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