The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists more than 8,400 species of wild fauna and flora as critically endangered, while nearly 30,000 more are considered endangered or vulnerable. World Wildlife Day 2022 aims to steer public and political debate towards the urgent need to reverse the fate of the most threatened species and support the restoration of their habitats and ecosystems.

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Conserving the habitat of keystone species has a positive impact on the population of many others because they depend on and share the same type of habitat necessary for the long-term survival of the keystone species in question.

One such example is the conservation of forest habitats to benefit the declining Asian elephant population and the positive benefits this can have on the conservation of other species that also depend on forests for their survival.

Asian elephants inhabit the dense forests and grassy plains of India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Sumatra. Gregarious in nature, they roam in family herds, feeding on the grass, leaves, twigs and bark of over 100 species of plants.

Elephant families roam wide areas to find food and water, but their habitats are shrinking dramatically due to habitat loss and encroachment. Since 1979, African elephant habitat has declined by more than 50% and Asian elephants only have 15% left from their original range. This means they are finding it increasingly difficult to find enough food and water to survive.

Habitat loss also means that elephants and humans come into conflict. As elephants struggle to find food and come into closer contact with humans, they have turned to feeding on crops that have encroached on their former habitat. This has resulted in many human deaths and injuries as farmers seek to defend their property. The humans retaliate by attacking the elephants, causing their numbers to drop further and causing immense suffering from inhumane and prolonged deaths.

Elephants are also threatened by poaching. Elephants are killed so that their tusks and, in some cases, their skins can be sold in the illegal trade. Although the international ivory trade was banned in 1989, there are still thriving markets around the world.

This huge loss of habitat and the impact of poaching in Asia has caused Asian elephant numbers to drop by at least 50% over the past three generations, and they are still in decline today. With only 40,000–50,000 left in the wildthe species is listed as endangered.

This large scale destruction has taken place despite our supposed love and respect for them and many cultures revere them as symbols of strength and wisdom.

For World Wildlife Day, read on to find out: What are the main causes of biodiversity loss?

The loss of elephants is catastrophic for elephants as a species, but also has an additional negative impact on the habitat they once inhabited.

Elephants are ecosystem engineers, their activities helping to promote the growth of vegetation essential to maintaining healthy forest habitats, which in turn increases carbon sequestration and helps mitigate climate change.

Elephants play a major role in seed dispersal, soil aeration and nutrient cycling. As forest architects, they provide an invaluable service by uprooting trees and creating holes in the forest canopy that allow light to reach plants closer to the ground, thereby promoting growth. This helps open up areas of dense forests for generations of plants to thrive and provide food and habitat for many species.

Lots of tall trees rely on large vertebrates like elephants for seed dispersal and regeneration. Elephants travel great distances and play a key role in spreading tree seedlings. They consume fruit, depositing their seeds in their droppings and providing the perfect environment for the seeds to germinate and flourish.

The dependence of healthy ecosystems on elephants has been demonstrated in forest elephant populations in Central Africa, with more than a dozen elephant-dependent tree species suffering catastrophic population declines in new plant growth after forest elephants were nearly wiped out of their ecosystems. Indeed, fruit trees all rely on forest elephants as their primary means of seed distribution.

Elephant dung is also an important food source for a host of different types of dung beetles. The beetles both benefit from the nutrients it contains and they bury the droppings under the soil where their larvae can feed and grow. In doing so, dung beetles loosen compacted soil and help deposit crucial nutrition in the dung into the soil where it is needed most to positively impact plant growth.

Helping dung beetles thrive is a good thing in itself, but in doing so they also become an important food source for many other species of birds and small mammals helping to support many other species.

Studies have also demonstrated that the presence of elephants increases the concentrations of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus in the soil, essential elements for a healthy ecosystem. The presence of elephants can even reverse the negative effects on soil health caused by the presence of livestock, helping to not only maintain but also restore ecosystems.

With this in mind, we can see that elephants are truly essential to the health of the ecosystems they inhabit and, therefore, to the survival of the millions of plant and animal species that also inhabit these ecosystems.

On the occasion of World Wildlife Day 2022, it is the perfect opportunity to support organizations that work to conserve elephant populations around the world and, in doing so, help maintain biodiversity crucial which, in turn, will help us mitigate the negative impact of global warming on our own lives.

Image by: Nguyen Phong Son. Courtesy of Animals Asia

Wildlife protection efforts

Animals Asia is one such organization currently doing work to not only improve the welfare of individuals on Asian elephants in Vietnam, but also to help the government conserve the wild elephant population in the region.

Wild elephant populations in Vietnam have been decimated by poaching, habitat loss and, historically, capture for tourism and work. The numbers have fallen below 100, a figure that conservationists consider unsustainable for their survival.

Animals Asia campaigns to end elephant riding and the cruel and unethical use of wild animals in tourism and entertainment. Wildlife site surveys are conducted to identify animal welfare issues, which are reported to authorities and used to influence positive regulatory change.

The organization has also signed a memorandum of understanding with the government of Dak Lak in 2021 to end the riding of elephants, which will not only have huge benefits for the elephants who are already suffering in this industry, but will also contribute to conservation efforts by reducing the demand for wild baby elephants. be poached and trafficked in this trade.

Animals Asia has already rescued 12 elephants as part of the ethical elephant touring program – the first in the country – at Yok Don National Park, while continuing to work with mahouts and authorities to promote the shift to a tourism model more sustainable and elephant-friendly, and educate schoolchildren and communities about animal sensitivity and conservation.

The article is written by Dave Neale, Director of Animal Welfare, Animals Asia

Image selected by: Nguyen Phong Son. Courtesy of Animals Asia

Rory O’Brien, 59, was previously an active walker. As of June 2020, he was battling exhaustion, double vision, dizziness and headaches.

Today, nearly two years after he was first infected, he still hasn’t been able to resume his appliance repair business.

“I was shaking on my legs, I couldn’t sit still for long periods of time,” Mr O’Brien said.

“If I met someone to chat, I needed something to hold on to, whether it was a fridge door at Aldi or a car to lean on.”

He is now waiting to see a neurologist but hopes to be able to return to work soon. Mr O’Brien hopes the slight improvement he has seen in recent weeks will continue.

It’s about solving problems, there’s brain fog, confusion and it’s quite frustrating.

“That’s no way to run a business,” he said.

In Cork City, Eyvonne Cusack was diagnosed with post-Covid POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome) following a Covid infection in October 2020.

Her symptoms, including dizziness, began four to six weeks later, she said: “It’s a total nightmare. POTS is scary.

She only returned to work last week on a part-time basis, and the special education assistant said poor health halted a comeback attempt last April.

“The (heart) palpitations got worse and worse, I had chest pains,” Ms Cusack said.

Before Covid my husband and I were outdoor people. I loved hiking, biking, and that life is over.

Efforts are increasing at the national level to respond to people suffering from the aftermath of the long Covid.

University Hospital Cork (CUH) is to host two clinics for patients, one for people who are less than 12 weeks since infection and a second for people who are more than 12 weeks after infection.

South/South West Hospital Group CEO Gerry O’Dwyer said management was making progress in recruiting staff to support the development of these specialist clinics.

The HSE published a ‘long Covid model of care’ last September which showed an expected national cost of €6.6million.

“There is a CUH representative on the post-acute clinic and long covid clinic working groups who is involved in the planning of these clinics, the preparation of national standards and the implementation of the model of care” , said Mr. O’Dwyer.

Labor TD Sean Sherlock, who received the update as a parliamentary response, said: ‘I am pleased the South/South West is now hosting a clinic. We need to make sure it is funded and allowed to explore and support people with these long Covid symptoms.

Meanwhile, although an HSE spokeswoman said patients could be treated by their GP or hospital consultant, many people with long-term Covid say they rely on private providers instead.

The backstory

A Golden Age of Concussion Research

The future

“Depending on your spatial scale of observation – whether you’re looking at kelp forests regionally or really focusing on a specific local area – the patterns that show up at those scales can indicate different factors,” Tom said. Bell, a project scientist at UC Santa Barbara’s Earth Research Institute and assistant scientist at WHOI, and senior author of an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Being able to observe the different drivers of giant kelp productivity and health at different scales, he said, can provide a more nuanced and current understanding of how kelp forests respond to changing climatic conditions. .

A founding species

Giant Kelp (Macrocystis pyriferous) are the largest seaweeds in the world. Spanning over 100 feet in height, they can be found in dense areas along the California coast. They are home to a wide range of marine animals that depend on them for food, shelter and raising their young. People also rely on kelp forests for recreation and to support and attract fish and other seafood.

“Giant kelp is a fundamental species and plays an outsized role in the dynamics of kelp forest ecosystems,” said David Siegel, professor of oceanography at UCSB and co-author of the paper. As a result, he added, resource agencies and conservation groups are interested in monitoring and managing these ephemeral systems using new remote sensing tools developed at UC Santa Barbara.

But what controls changes in the canopy cover of a kelp forest? According to the researchers, discerning this requires assessing the kelp’s external interactions with the environment, as well as their internal biological processes — specifically the senescence, or age-related physical deterioration of the kelps over time. Making adequate assessments of intrinsic and extrinsic factors has been a challenge, they say, due to “the inability to track both abundance and plant health at appropriate scales”. Field measurements tend to occur in discrete areas on small scales, and the lack of relevant measurements on large continuous scales makes it difficult to disentangle how environment and age demographics influence kelp populations. .

A bigger picture

Enter remote sensing technology. Using data collected by satellite and aircraft, Bell and Siegel focused on a 4,000 square kilometer study area in the Santa Barbara Channel, a section of the Coast Long-Term Ecological Research Site. of Santa Barbara from UCSB. The researchers used three decades of satellite imagery to assess canopy biomass and age dynamics. They also used repeat imaging spectrometer data collected by plane from 2013 to 2015 to estimate the chlorophyll to carbon ratio – an established indicator of physiological status. To these large spatial measurements, they added longitudinal and repeated field observations of kelp health and productivity to assess the roles of kelp frond age and environmental conditions on kelp population dynamics.

The researchers found that the effects of different drivers were more pronounced at different scales.

“At the regional scale for areas greater than one kilometer, seawater nutrients were related to the dynamics of kelp physiological state,” Bell said. “However, at local scales of less than one kilometer, internal senescence processes related to age demography of the kelp canopy were associated with patterns of biomass loss in individual kelp forests, despite conditions nutritional uniforms.” Thus, the growth of kelp fronds and the initiation of new ones are influenced by the regional concentration of nutrients in the water. But over time and on a small scale, internal biological processes take over and older fronds begin to deteriorate, regardless of nutrient availability.

“We didn’t know that senescence would lead to such interesting spatial patterns in the canopy at the local scale,” Bell said. “It was previously thought that when seawater nutrients decline in summer, the entire canopy would respond in the same way. This research shows that different parts of the forest age and are lost sooner than other parts, and it is important to understand why seawater nutrient dynamics do not always correspond to kelp dynamics.Although the intrinsic small-scale phenomenon of senescence is the primary driver of kelp canopy frond dynamics , he added, this does not exclude the influence of larger external factors, such as large wave events, which could wipe out the entire canopy.

“There is an interaction between extrinsic factors controlling the population dynamics of Santa Barbara Channel kelp forests at large scales, while intrinsic factors regulate spatial patterns at smaller scales,” Siegel said. “This understanding will lead to better models of how our kelp forests will change, given climate change.”

Meanwhile, the use of new and advanced sensing technologies such as hyperspectral imaging will give ecologists “another tool in their toolbox to understand how systems change, whether those systems are lowland tropical forests or giant kelp,” Bell said. “This is going to be more important than ever as the environment becomes less predictable.” The paper, according to the researchers, provides proof-of-concept information for NASA’s upcoming Surface Biology and Geology satellite mission, which plans to use hyperspectral imagery to observe Earth processes on land and at sea, as well as the effects of human activity on the environment.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has announced that the city’s roads will become more dangerous for cyclists if road safety programs are scrapped, as the UK government has cut funding to Transport for London (TfL), the body local responsible for maintaining the city’s cycling and walking infrastructure. TfL faces a huge budget shortfall and has also warned of massive cuts to bus, tube and road services if its funding is cut. The agency also said discussions with the government were continuing in its attempt to secure long-term financial assistance.

One of the main reasons for TfL’s revenue shortfall is reduced public transport fare revenue due to the Covid pandemic. This suggests that other cities planning improvements to cycling infrastructure could suffer the same fate for the same reason. TfL’s current emergency bailout deal with the government was due to expire on February 4, but the deal has been extended for two weeks. If there is no deal before this deadline, TfL’s Healthy Streets budget, which is for cycling and walking projects, will face a forced cut of £473million and have a budget shortfall of £1.5 billion by 2024-25.

To keep its budget viable, TfL has made emergency proposals which include scrapping walking and cycling schemes, as well as ending its Direct Vision scheme to protect vulnerable road users from lorries. Khan said this would have serious consequences for planned improvements in road safety and force TfL to adopt a policy of “managed decline” as further infrastructure projects will be shelved. “The bad news is that the managed decline not only means that we cannot progress at the rate that cyclists want, but that we will not be able to preserve the junctions that we have. [improved]“Khan told the Evening Standard.

Failure to improve cycling infrastructure could also prevent people from cycling for recreation or commuting. According to a recent Australian survey, the lack of proper cycling infrastructure, with cycle lanes physically separated from traffic, prevents people, even those who own bicycles, from cycling as much as they want. Nick Bowes, chief executive of the Center for London think tank, said encouraging walking and cycling was “crucial” if London was to have safer streets, cleaner air and less congestion. “If we are to have any chance of achieving these goals, it is crucial that more people walk and cycle for shorter journeys,” he said. “But it will be all the more difficult if the budget for Transport for London’s Healthy Streets is reduced. Without a funding regulation, we will struggle to build safe, well-designed routes that help people walk and cycle more.

Last month, a federal judge approved the largest debt restructuring plan ever reported in the United States, paving the way for an end to Puerto Rico’s long and painful bankruptcy process.

The plan — capping a years-long debate between creditors and local and federal officials — cuts most of the island’s largest chunk of outstanding debt from $33 billion to about $7 billion. The debt originally stood at $70 billion plus $50 billion in pension obligations.

Puerto Rico’s Electric Power Authority owes more than $9 billion separately. The financial watchdog tasked with bailing the island out of bankruptcy expects to have a plan for that debt later this year.

Last week, the board’s longtime executive director Natalie Jaresko, who helped broker the plan, announced her resignation effective April. She and the board have been criticized for the time it took to negotiate the plan as well as the austerity measures imposed in the meantime, but they hailed the deal as a historic step for the future of Porto Rico.

Although the plan is a step towards lifting Puerto Rico out of crippling debt, experts remain concerned about the island’s economic future.

According to the policy director of the Center for the New Economy, Sergio Marxuach, the plan is “based on long-term projections for the economy, which are very uncertain”.

Economists expect an influx of silver to reach Puerto Rico over the next five years linked to hurricane and earthquake recovery efforts. But the rest of the economy remains uncertain.

“I want to believe that elected officials in Puerto Rico and the United States are concerned that Puerto Rico needs to grow after reconstruction is over,” economist and University of Puerto Rico professor José Caraballo told ABC News. – Cueto.

“The economy is not going to grow on its own, and it’s not going to create jobs through more fiscal stimulus, either by receiving new federal funds or rather by issuing new debt,” he said. added Caraballo-Cueto.

How did Puerto Rico’s economy falter?

Decades of mismanagement and excessive indebtedness led Puerto Rico to file for bankruptcy in 2016 under Puerto Rico’s Supervisory Management Economic Stability Act (PROMESA). The law, signed by former President Barack Obama, gave the island an alternative because, as a territory, it could not file under Chapter 9, the traditional route for municipalities in financial difficulty.

The previous year, the island had defaulted on payments of $70 billion in public debt and more than $50 billion in pension obligations. The pension part of the debt will not be restructured, which means that each pensioner is supposed to receive what they have been promised.

“Puerto Rico’s debt is unpayable,” former Governor Alejandro García-Padilla said in 2015. Under his administration and President Obama’s last term, PROMESA was taxed, including its financial control and management board.

The seven-member board of directors is responsible for managing the island’s finances and has come under fire from residents, local and federal officials amid delays in finding a consensus that would lift Puerto Rico out of bankruptcy.

In a statement announcing his departure, effective April, Jaresko touted his accomplishments during his tenure.

“I am leaving the Supervisory Board at a time of recovery and stability. I am proud of what we have accomplished and I am confident that the road that has taken us to this important milestone will take Puerto Rico further towards growth and prosperity,” Jaresko said in a statement.

Board Chairman David Skeel praised his work.

“I am saddened by his personal decision to step back, but I also understand his desire for change after five years of rewarding but hard and difficult work to help Puerto Rico recover from its fiscal and economic crisis,” Skeel said.

Jaresko, however, acknowledged that “these years were complex, and painful natural disasters, political unrest and the pandemic added to the obstacles we had to overcome.”

Months after the council began working on the island, Puerto Rico was hit by Hurricanes Irma and María, causing more than $90 billion in losses, according to the local government.

Three years later, the island was again hit by thousands of earthquakes and the ongoing pandemic, further weakening Puerto Rico’s economy.

What’s next for the island?

Puerto Rico will have to start paying off the debt in hopes that the island’s economy will grow regardless of any federal aid that is expected to arrive.

“It’s a leap of faith,” Marxuach, of the Center for the New Economy, told ABC News.

“It’s a big concern for us, that once that money dries up, we really don’t have, you know, a strategic vision, as you know, for growing the economy. And we could fall back into a recession,” Marxuach added.

Although many pundits are aware that the deal is not perfect and risky, they considered it a step towards pulling Puerto Rico out of the financial crisis.

Under the approved plan, pension obligations were protected, securing many retirees who feared for their economic stability.

“I think the positive side of this restructuring was that pensions were protected…and I think that’s a big win for civil society in Puerto Rico,” Caraballo-Cueto told ABC News.

While he favors full pension protection, Marxuach worries about what pension protection means for the ability to invest in younger generations.

“Protecting pensions was a good thing, but I think about how much we’re going to pay out of pensions every year going forward, which is about $2 billion and then think about how much we’re going to put from the general fund to the University of Puerto Rico, which is only $500 million,” Marxuach says.

As Puerto Rico enters a new phase in the bankruptcy process, experts warn this is just the beginning.

“We’re rounding the corner and things are starting to look up, but we still have a lot of work to do,” Marxuach said.