The world's coral reefs are undergoing the largest coral bleaching event on record, which has affected at least 83 countries and territories.

The carnivorous "bone collector" caterpillar is the only known species of its kind, researchers say, and its ancient lineage may soon die out.

Researchers from the University of Hawaii at Manoa detailed their discovery in a paper published Thursday in Science. The caterpillar—which they’ve dubbed the “bone collector”—uses the disguise to live hidden within a spider’s web, where it can prey upon other small bugs that get stuck inside. Unfortunately, the unique caterpillar’s continued survival is likely under threat, since it’s only known to exist on a single mountain range on one Hawaiian island.

Archived (Wayback Machine):

• earth.com article
• full study in Nature as webpage and PDF

• A rare population of leucistic, or partially white, purple-faced langurs near Sri Lanka’s Sinharaja Forest Reserve has attracted ecotourism interest, even as monkeys in general are perceived by farmers as crop-raiding pests.
• Unlike albinism, leucism causes a partial loss of pigmentation, and researchers have documented around 30 white langurs in the area.
• The unique langurs have helped transform the village of Lankagama into an ecotourism hub, benefiting the local community and conservation efforts.
• The presence of white monkeys across Sri Lanka, including rare cases of albino primates, highlights the island’s rich biodiversity and the need for further research and protection.

archived (Wayback Machine)

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/4684877

Jason Baldes drove down a dusty, sagebrush highway earlier this month, pulling 11 young buffalo in a trailer up from Colorado to the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. His blue truck has painted on the side a drawing of buffalo and a calf. As the executive director of the Wind River Buffalo Initiative and Eastern Shoshone tribal member, he’s helped grow the number of buffalo on the reservation for the last decade. The latest count: the Northern Arapaho tribe have 97 and the Eastern Shoshone have 118.

“Tribes have an important role in restoring buffalo for food sovereignty, culture and nutrition, but also for overall bison recovery,” he said.

The Eastern Shoshone this month voted to classify buffalo as wildlife instead of livestock as a way to treat them more like elk or deer rather than like cattle. Because the two tribes share the same land base, the Northern Arapaho are expected to vote on the distinction as well. The vote indicates a growing interest to both restore buffalo on the landscape and challenge the relationship between animal and product.

While climate change isn’t the main driver behind the push to restore buffalo wildlife status, the move could bring positive effects to the fight against global warming. Climate change is shrinking Wyoming’s glaciers, contributing to drought, and increasing wildfires. While buffalo might give off comparable emissions to cows, increasing biodiversity can promote drought resistance and some herds of buffalo have been shown to help the earth store more carbon.

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• Bats are one of the most diverse orders of mammals and represent an important component of ecological balance. They may make up a large portion of the mammal diversity — including in countries like Rwanda where much of the natural forest and savannah habitats have been lost, changed or degraded.
• Researchers recently discovered two rare bat species in Rwanda’s Nyungwe National Park, and the IUCN lists 54 species of bats as occurring in the country.
• Research shows that killing bats to control zoonotic diseases can make things worse.
• Several studies show that bats are important predators of insects and are, therefore, a natural asset for agrarian productivity, suppressing pest populations.

Archived (Wayback Machine):

• Mongabay article
• study cited: webpage or PDF

• The recent “Assessment of the Ecological Health of the Gulf of California” report shows a decline in several populations of animals throughout the narrow sea flanked by the Mexican mainland and Baja California.
• The report was compiled by the Next Generation Sonoran Desert Researchers (N-Gen) in the U.S. in collaboration with Prescott College’s Kino Bay Center field station in Mexico, and draws on long-term monitoring studies.
• Many of the assessed groups, such as seabirds, whales, giant squid, crabs, starfish and fish, are in decline.
• Basic primary productivity, which nurtures species diversity and abundance in the Gulf of California, remains stable.

Archived (Wayback Machine):

• Mongabay article
• report cited (PDF)

archived (Wayback Machine)

To safeguard threatened plants, science must unravel the hidden biology of often-persnickety seeds as they age, sleep and awaken

In the mid-1990s physicists Geoffrey West and Louis Bettencourt collaborated with biologists to study allometric scaling laws, where it is generally found that larger organisms are more efficient consumers of energy than smaller ones. After mathematically explaining these laws through fractal network effects, the researchers began applying them to the human built environment, particularly cities.

Certain environmentalists and sustainability advocates mistook the significance of these results, leading to decades of policy work and investments in urban growth that, West now admits, are doomed to fail.

The fact that so many, including the originators of the work, got this story wrong reflects the cultural blinders and techno-biases that typify most of us living in high energy modernity. Doing the opposite of our conditioned response to the overshoot predicament will likely lead to more favorable outcomes.

archived (Wayback Machine)

Cross-posting for the biology lesson.

The protected land includes a one-acre fish hatchery at Unicorn Lake in eastern Maryland and the sprawling Green Ridge State Forest in the west. It includes shorelines, farms and woods around Naval Air Station Patuxent River, and the Chesapeake Forest Lands, some 75,000 wooded acres that are home to species like bald eagles and the once-endangered Delmarva fox squirrel.

None of it can be developed, and all of it has helped Maryland reach a landmark conservation goal six years ahead of schedule, before any other state that’s joined an effort known as “30 by 30.”

The program is part of a global initiative to protect 30 percent of the Earth’s land and waters by 2030. In 2023, Maryland joined the effort and a year later, Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, announced that the goal had already been met. Nearly 1.9 million acres of land has been permanently protected from development, and the state has set a new target, to conserve 40 percent of its land by 2040.

https://archive.ph/iZcTr

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/21166771

The large leaves of the aguaje, a tropical palm tree that grows in the peatlands and other seasonal wetland areas in tropical South America, form a rounded crown on its head from which its oval-shaped fruits hang heavily in bunches from December to June. When the reddish maroon reptilian-looking fruits are ready for harvest, trained tree climbers from the Indigenous Maijuna communities in the Peruvian Amazon climb the 35-meter (115-foot) gangling trees to collect them.

Previously, the Maijuna people harvested the fruit by cutting down the trees. So did many others, such as Kichwa and Kukama Kukamiria communities. While easier, this led to the degradation of the landscape and genetic diversity as aguaje trees (Mauritia flexuosa) are dioecious, meaning only female trees produce fruit. In the 1990s, the discovery of its market potential led to large-scale commercial extraction by both Indigenous communities and outsiders across the Peruvian Amazon.

“Our ancestors weren’t aware that they were harming their palm trees,” Edber Tang Rios, president of the Maijuna-Kichwa Regional Conservation Area (ACR) management committee, told Mongabay over WhatsApp voice messages. “They had no knowledge. They cut it down and, little by little, it was dying out.”

archived (Wayback Machine)

archived (Wayback Machine)

The conversion of natural habitats to agricultural land, urban areas, and infrastructure represents the single greatest threat to wildlife worldwide. An estimated 40% of the Earth’s land surface is now used for food production. The expansion of the human footprint has left wildlife with smaller, more fragmented territories, often insufficient to maintain viable populations.

About 5/6 of that is animal agriculture.

For billions of people worldwide, wild-caught fish, bush meat, and other wildlife products provide essential protein and income.

Exploiting and killing other beings is NOT essential. To the contrary, it is literally the cause of the problem that the article is about, from habitat destruction to climate change, and indeed threatens the survival of "billions of people" worldwide.

Scientists and conservation organizations have rallied around the goal of “bending the curve” of biodiversity loss — transitioning from decline to recovery by 2030. Achieving this ambitious target requires immediate action on multiple fronts:

[...]

Transforming food systems: Shifting to sustainable agriculture and fisheries practices, reducing food waste, and moving toward more plant-based diets in high-consumption countries.

How about veganic permaculture food forests using syntropic methods? Individual and community food security and sovereignty without the bullshit.

The author really missed an opportunity to point out that the exploitation of other beings is the biggest contributor to the problem and promote the abolition of such exploitation as the most effective solution.

archived (Wayback Machine)

archived (Wayback Machine)

The Rangeley Lakes region can often feel like a forgotten corner of Maine, far from the state’s famed coasts or cities. This western stretch is remote, rugged woodland. Forests become impassable in spring’s muddy months and cool mountain streams teem with a trout population that draws legions of recreational fishers. It’s also a part of the state where logging and timber hauls have indelibly shaped the land and livelihoods of those who live there.

Now about 78,000 acres surrounding the Rangeley Lakes may soon be linked to 500,000 acres of protected land reaching across central Maine to New Hampshire. A project announced March 18 and agreed to by four leading conservation groups and a 70-year-old timber company aims to bolster a priority spawning ground for brook trout, broaden a migration corridor for wildlife and restrict future development in the woodlands.

The plan to permanently protect lands around Maine’s Magalloway River is the brainchild of the Rangeley Lakes Heritage Trust, the Forest Society of Maine, the Northeast Wilderness Trust, and The Nature Conservancy.

https://archive.ph/TDNHQ

archived (Wayback Machine)

archived (Wayback Machine)

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/4628992

• Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren was in Washington earlier in April to watch President Donald Trump sign an order aimed at revitalizing the coal industry.

• Coal mines and coal-fired power plants were once steady income sources for the Navajo Nation, but the money dried up with the closure of a key plant and the mines that supplied it.

• Some Navajo organizers say Nygren's support for coal ignores the effects of fossil fuels on the climate and on human health. One expert said Nygren exaggerated the importance of coal.

Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren traveled to Washington, D.C., earlier in April to watch President Donald Trump sign an executive order aimed at deregulating coal production on federal lands and revitalizing the mining industry, signaling what appears to be the tribal leader's support for coal.

In the executive order, Trump asserted that coal is vital to the nation’s economic and national security. He declared that removing federal regulatory barriers to coal production is a national priority and encouraged the use of coal to help meet the country’s growing energy needs.

"Today marks a pivotal moment for energy policy in the United States," Nygren said of the president's action. "As President Trump signs an executive order aimed at revitalizing the coal industry, I want to emphasize the importance of including tribal nations like the Navajo Nation in this national conversation."

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