UKInsectPopulation damselfly 1500 crop

many global insect populations suffering death by a thousand cuts

DEATH BY A THOU­SAND CUTS is how Pro­fessor Rodolfo Dirzo sums up the sit­u­a­tion of the plight of in­sects on the planet Earth in the 21st cen­tury. Dirzo is a Bing Pro­fessor in en­vi­ron­mental sci­ence at Stan­ford and a se­nior fellow at the Stan­ford Woods In­sti­tute for the En­vi­ron­ment. [Read more] “many global insect populations suffering death by a thousand cuts”

CowFarts 2 1500

holy cow! it ain’t the farts (which are funny), but the burps (which aren’t )

THIS AR­TICLE IS TI­TLED “One Scientist’s Am­bi­tious Plan to Achieve Global Cooling With Cattle” with the sub-title, “Cows could be a cli­mate change solution—if we take the sci­ence se­ri­ously.” Written by Farmer Georgie, it ap­pears on the One Zero pub­li­ca­tion on Medium (Au­gust 17, 2020). Here are the first few paragraphs:

“Farts are funny. [Read more] “holy cow! it ain’t the farts (which are funny), but the burps (which aren’t )”

LonesomeGeorge tortoise 1500 crop

lonesome george, the pinta island tortoise, has the “perfect” extinction story

THE LAST OF THE PINTA IS­LAND TOR­TOISES died in 2012. Known as Lone­some George, his story is “the per­fect ex­tinc­tion story. It fea­tures a charis­matic char­acter with a rec­og­niz­able face, an ob­vious vil­lain, and the tire­less ef­forts of nat­u­ral­ists. The pop­u­la­tion of the Pinta Is­land tor­toise species was dec­i­mated by whalers hunting and eating them during the 19th cen­tury Zo­ol­o­gist József Vágvölgyi dis­cov­ered George in 1971 and brought him into cap­tivity. [Read more] “lonesome george, the pinta island tortoise, has the “perfect” extinction story”

GCC BananaFarm 1500

a banana farm whose main business is producing biodiversity

RIO SIXAOLA IS A BA­NANA FARM in Costa Rica one of the first two Rain­forest Al­liance Cer­ti­fied farms in the world. It con­tains the only in­tact man­grove swamp on the At­lantic coast, and La Amistad In­ter­na­tional Park, a World Her­itage site that pro­tects the largest area of undis­turbed high­land wa­ter­sheds and forests in southern Cen­tral America. [Read more] “a banana farm whose main business is producing biodiversity”

GCC Nepal 1500

cooler regions becoming more hospitable for mosquitoes

WHEN MOS­QUITO SEASON brought past dengue out­breaks to re­gions across the Asian tropics, Nepal hardly had to worry. The high-altitude Hi­malayan country was typ­i­cally too chilly for the disease-carrying in­sects to live. But with cli­mate change opening new paths for the viral dis­ease, Nepal is now reeling from an un­prece­dented out­break. [Read more] “cooler regions becoming more hospitable for mosquitoes”