Biodiversity

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17971473

I see this was talked about a few months back in a different article here, but it looks paywalled.

I've made a brief summary here of a new BBC article, and also included some photos of the birds.

> BBC: How decline of Indian vultures led to 500,000 human deaths 25 JUL 2024 > > >More than two decades ago, India’s vultures began dying because of a drug used to treat sick cows. > > > >By the mid-1990s, the 50 million-strong vulture population had plummeted to near zero because of diclofenac, a cheap non-steroidal painkiller for cattle that is fatal to vultures. Birds that fed on carcasses of livestock treated with the drug suffered from kidney failure and died. > > >The unintentional decimation of these heavy, scavenging birds allowed deadly bacteria and infections to proliferate, leading to the deaths of about half a million people over five years, says the study published in the American Economic Association journal. > > >“Vultures are considered nature’s sanitation service because of the important role they play in removing dead animals that contain bacteria and pathogens from our environment - without them, disease can spread,” says the study’s co-author, Eyal Frank, an assistant professor at University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy. > > > >“Understanding the role vultures play in human health underscores the importance of protecting wildlife, and not just the cute and cuddly. They all have a job to do in our ecosystems that impacts our lives.” > > >The authors estimated that between 2000 and 2005, the loss of vultures caused around 100,000 additional human deaths annually, resulting in more than $69bn (£53bn) per year in mortality damages or the economic costs associated with premature deaths. > > > >These deaths were due to the spread of disease and bacteria that vultures would have otherwise removed from the environment. > > >“The vulture collapse in India provides a particularly stark example of the type of hard-to-reverse and unpredictable costs to humans that can come from the loss of a species,” says Mr Sudarshan, an associate professor at the University of Warwick and co-author of the study. > > It is amazing to see what a difference these birds most take for granted contribute to our success as a species. > > Many find vultures to be creepy, but after learning about some of their amazing abilities and understanding why they've evolved to become what they are, they are superbly designed animals that excel at doing a very important job. > > White-rumped vulture (Population loss since 2000: 98%) > > ! > > Indian vulture (Population loss since 2000: 95%) > > ! > > Red-headed vulture (Population loss since 2000: 91%) > > !

> A tiny native rodent that was on the brink of extinction on the mainland has bounced back in the most unlikely of places — an island infested with death adders and tiger snakes. > >The rat's survival on the South Australian island, which it was introduced to more than three decades ago, has been the result of one of Australia's worst invasive weeds, the African boxthorn.

> Co-author of the study, Flinders University associate professor Vera Weisbecker, said invasive weeds were damaging to Australia's biodiversity so it was good news a threatened mammal was thriving in that habitat.

>However the researchers cautioned against perceptions that invasive weeds weren't as bad as they seemed. > > "We completely agree that it is a damaging weed that needs to be controlled," Ms Kraehe said.

> "If it continues to spread, it may displace too much of the native vegetation and lead to a collapse of the island's ecosystem, ultimately affecting the greater stick-nest rats themselves," Dr Hill said.

Without paywall: https://archive.ph/SJGvM

I had been holding into this article I wrote for a while now, looking for the right place to share it, and it was recommended that I share it here.

I had written it to post on !superbowl@lemmy.world, but this isn't really the vibe I try to curate over there, so I had removed it. I've seen talk recently about methane flaring on Mander, so I wanted to finally share this.

Thankfully since I've written this, there seems to be proposals by the current administration in the US to reduce or eliminate flaring, which I still need to read more about.

I hope you take the time to read this and can encourage your legislators to follow up on getting this regulated to protect humans and animals affected by this practice.

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The following is about an unpleasant topic that I was unaware of until this week. It concerns landfills, which is not a glamourous topic to discuss, but we need to be aware of problems if we are to get them fixed. Due to new climate change regulations of the last few years, a new concern has come about in regard to keeping wildlife safe as we try to control greenhouse gas emissions.

I have avoided including anything graphic so you can all be made aware of what is happening without being forced to look at something you wouldn't want to see, but some of the links do contain both great information, but also contain photos of the injuries that occur from this new danger. At the end of the post, I list some articles that do not contain any potentially disturbing images, but still provide expanded information on this subject.

Global warming has been the focus of much regulation in recent years. Methane constitutes about 12% of US greenhouse gas emissions, as opposed to the 80% that is carbon dioxide, but the impact of methane is greater than carbon dioxide due to the density of the molecules. Methane will hold onto 28 times as much heat in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. There are a variety of manmade and natural sources of methane emissions, but today we will examine the 15% that is from landfills. Methane is colorless, odorless, and burns with a flame not typically visible in daylight.

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Landfill Gas Flare Test

The Clean Air Act requires landfills to reduce methane emissions from landfill gas, also known as LFG. There are typically 3 options that can be used. LFG can be collected and processed to use for energy generation production. It can also be cleaned and then sold for other purposes. Most facilities do not generate enough LFG to make this a profitable venture, so the final method of methane reduction is more commonly used: flaring.

EPA: LFG Overview

Landfill Gas Flares

Flaring may not make sense at first. By burning methane, carbon dioxide is created. The thought is that by burning the methane, the resultant carbon dioxide is still less damaging than would be from venting the methane itself. Harm reduction is still positive, but it takes us to the point of this post.

By having a 1800F/1000C invisible flame coming from a tall tree-like structure next to a large open space that provides food to rodents, this creates a huge danger to raptors. Large numbers of birds of prey are being incinerated, either going to perch atop the tower, or by pursuing game or defending territory and passing through the flames. The primary victims of flaring are Red Tailed Hawks and Great Horned Owls.

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Bald eagles, kestrels, merlins, and other birds have been documented to have been injured or killed by the flaring. Researchers estimate the number to be higher than the data suggests, due to injured birds flying or running away after receiving injuries. Smaller birds may just become completely incinerated by the extreme heat.

One the raptors, damage can be very extensive. The amount of feather damaged received could take 1-2 years to regrow, if new feather growth is possible. Damage to the follicles that regrow feathers and the burning of the skin itself can prevent feathers from ever regrowing. When some birds only have a lifespan of a few years to begin with, decisions need to be made weighing the outcome of rehabilitation vs euthanasia.

NJ Spotlight News - NJ Landfill Burning Kestrels

NJ Story on Methane Flare Hawk Injuries

The issue has been widely discussed in New Jersey as reports have come out about the horrific injuries to the wildlife. There are no legal requirements for any animal safety measures to be installed. That is not to say they do not exist. There are also systems available that use an enclosed flame. Safety cages have been installed on some open flame systems. US Fish and Wildlife was contacted to try to come up with safety measures, and as there was nothing currently existing to solve this problem, the following article goes into how they developed a solution.

Article about flare cage construction

Landfills do take actions to keep wildlife away for a number of reasons, which can include the safety of the animals. I did find this industry article about how they try to deter wildlife from building their homes in and near the landfills.

Bird Control Best Practices for Landfills

The linked articles are all very informative, but also contain some pretty graphic pictures. If you want to read more, but avoid that, I'd recommend sticking to the 2 here:

EPA Info

This is the EPA intro to Landfill Gas and is just basic info to familiarize yourself with LFG, where it comes from, and some nice charts about gas emissions.

NJ News - Giant Cage

This is the story of the safety cage construction. This article is largely positive in tone compared to most of the others, and focuses mainly on solutions instead of the problem part of things. It does have one photo of a Kestrel with a burned tail and wings. It is not a pleasant picture, but it is about as mild as can convey the serious damage that can occur from a flaring injury. If you can handle that, this article is definitely recommended reading.

Nat Geo Article on Methane Flares NatGeo Article, mostly focused on the work by The Raptor Trust in New Jersey. (A great place to visit, by the way!) It says there's an injured bird pic in this, but it doesn't load for me on the linked Archive.org post.

One of its favorite prey is the Arizona bark scorpion (Centruroides sculpturatus) — whose venom is potent enough to kill humans.

To get around this, the southern grasshopper mouse reduces the venom's effects by shutting down the chemical channel that transmits the pain signal to the brain when that particular venom is present. This means they are essentially numb to the pain — although researchers still don't know why the toxin isn't lethal to them.

My spotify has turned into nature noisebox. I swear by nature recordings for focus with ADHD.

Plants react to and communicate with their environment in sometimes surprising ways that enhance their survival in changing conditions. Does this constitute intelligence? Can you have intelligence without a brain? What do we owe plants? Maybe a little overlong and meandering but important piece. It's a decade old so I wonder how the research has developed since then.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/10399931

> Naturalists have found a very rare type of truffle living in a Scottish forestry plantation which is being cut down so a natural Atlantic rainforest can grow in its place. > > The discovery of the globally rare fungus near Creagan in the west Highlands has thrown up a paradox: the work to remove the non-native Sitka spruce, to allow rewilding by native trees, means the truffle will be lost. > > Chamonixia caespitosa, a type of truffle normally found in the Alps and Scandinavia, has only been recorded once before in the UK, in north Wales, seven years ago. Inedible to humans, it has a symbiotic relationship specific to this species of spruce. When it ripens, its white fruit turns a mottled blue in contact with the air. > > The naturalists involved are puzzled about how it arrived in Scotland; it is very unusual for fungus spores to travel to the UK on the wind, and the UK’s Sitka plantations were grown from seeds originally imported from Canada.

The tiny moles are covered in silky, golden fur and spend very little time above ground, although they do occasionally surface in wet and cool weather, according to Animal Diversity Web. But, the majority of the time, these tubular-shaped marsupials move through the sand up to 8.2 feet (2.5 meters) below the surface using their heads and excavator-like clawed hands.