Will protecting 30 percent of Earth prevent the extinction crisis? | Science News

What is needed = at least 30% by 2030, 50% by 2050. How can we do this with 9 Billion people?



Nations are drafting a plan to protect 30 percent of Earth by 2030 to save biodiversity. The number reflects politics more than scientific consensus.

Nature needs to be protected, scientists agree, but how best to do it is up for debate.

For millions of years, giants graced the murky depths of China’s Yangtze River. The Chinese Paddlefish (Psephurus gladius), which could reach 7 meters in length, used its swordlike snout to sense the electrical perturbations made by smaller prey, snatching them in the dark. But no more.

The fish was declared extinct in 2019, a victim of overfishing and habitat loss.

Its story is being played out across the world. From winding rivers to the windswept tundra to the dense tropical forests of Borneo, nature is in trouble.

Plants and animals are increasingly threatened by human activities and habitat encroachment. One study estimates a million species face extinction within decades (SN: 5/8/19). That’s 1 million distinct, idiosyncratic answers to the basic question of how to make a living on planet Earth, gone.



Habitat loss and such human encroachment as this clear-cutting in the Amazon (shown) are a major threat to biodiversity worldwide. The United Nations is drafting an ambitious new set of conservation targets to safeguard species and prevent further losses. LUOMAN/E+/GETTY IMAGES PLUS



Continue reading at: Will protecting 30 percent of Earth prevent the extinction crisis? | Science News

Why Covid-19 Will Not Be The Last Pandemic - Alum Knight Partners - Medium

Zoonotic pathogens — those which transmit naturally between non-human animals to humans — have been the subject of extensive research for decades. These pathogens originate in a host or natural reservoir which is their natural habitat for survival and reproduction. Humans, animals and even the environment (plants, soil and water) are reservoirs of different types of pathogens (infectious agents). When a pathogen is transmitted under natural conditions to humans, the process is called zoonosis.

Over the last four decades, there has been an increase in emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) in humans, and nearly three-quarters of them have been zoonotic infections. Zoonosis is not a new occurrence; the origins of a wide range of human diseases, including plague, influenza, anthrax, yellow fever and tuberculosis, can be traced back to animals, with most of them originating in domestic animals (including livestock) and poultry. However, recent emergences of infectious diseases are frequently being traced back to wild animals. Some of these pathogens transmit directly from the reservoir to humans, while others transmit via an intermediate animal host.



Continue reading at: Why Covid-19 Will Not Be The Last Pandemic - Alum Knight Partners - Medium

We are creating conditions for diseases like COVID-19 to emerge | Ensia

As habitat and biodiversity loss increase globally, the novel coronavirus outbreak may be just the beginning of mass pandemics


Illicit Endangered Wildlife Trade in Möng La, Shan, Myanmar Photo courtesy of Dan Bennett from Wikimedia, licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Continue reading at:We are creating conditions for diseases like COVID-19 to emerge | Ensia

Escaping Pandora’s Box — Another Novel Coronavirus: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2002106?query=TOC in the New England Journal of Medicine

Habitat Destruction And Biodiversity Loss at the Root of Emerging Infectious Diseases: https://www.ucdavis.edu/one-health/habitat-destruction-and-biodiversity-loss-root-emerging-infectious-diseases/

Global shifts in mammalian population trends reveal key predictors of virus spillover risk: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2019.2736

Why Jane Goodall says human disregard for nature led to the coronavirus pandemic | PBS NewsHour

Many infectious diseases that have emerged in our lifetime — Zika virus, MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome), AIDS and Ebola, among them — have stemmed in some way from human interference with wildlife and their habitats, creating the conditions that allow new viruses, like COVID-19, to spill over from animals to people.

Continue reading at: Why Jane Goodall says human disregard for nature led to the coronavirus pandemic | PBS NewsHour

and here: https://thehill.com/homenews/coronavirus-report/492357-jane-goodall-blames-disregard-for-nature-for-coronavirus-pandemic

Scientific study warning about this in 2009: Biodiversity loss and the rise of zoonotic pathogens: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1198743X14604122

Supreme Court Leaves the Clean Water Act Intact | Earthjustice

Victory: Court decision leaves in place vital protections for the nation’s oceans, rivers, lakes

APRIL 23, 2020

Washington, D.C. — Today the Supreme Court issued its opinion in County of Maui v. Hawaiʻi Wildlife Fund siding with clean water advocates that point source discharges to navigable waters through groundwater are regulated under the Clean Water Act.

The following is a statement from David Henkin, Earthjustice attorney who argued the case defending clean water:

“This decision is a huge victory for clean water. The Supreme Court has rejected the Trump administration’s effort to blow a big hole in the Clean Water Act’s protections for rivers, lakes, and oceans.



A turtle surfaces offshore of Kahekili Beach Park, Maui, Hawaii. COURTESY OF DON MCLEISH

U.S. SUPREME COURT OPINION (p. 14)

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Continue reading at: Supreme Court Leaves the Clean Water Act Intact | Earthjustice

This is how Europe is helping companies and workers as the coronavirus crisis deepens | World Economic Forum

If Europe can help their people like that, why can the richest country on Earth, the USA not do the same?

This is how Europe is helping companies and workers as the coronavirus crisis deepens | World Economic Forum

Do not believe demagogues on coronavirus - Opinion - The Daily Telegram - Adrian, MI - Adrian, MI

In response to your article “Lawmakers criticize governor’s extended ‘stay home’ order” from April 11.

Unfortunately, our own Lenawee County state Rep. Bronna Kahle and state Sen. Dale W. Zorn are following President Donald Trump’s denial of sound science and become conspirators of unnecessary deaths by not supporting social distancing and stay home orders and attacking our Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s prudent decisions. Anybody with a minimum of common sense and some basic science education can find the relevant information, and if you compare the expected death rates of doing nothing compared to measures as the governor promotes, it takes basic math skills to realize how criminal calls for a loosening of the rules are. And if you did not realize yet, Lenawee County is not isolated from the rest of Michigan and if travel, work and gathering restrictions are softened, we can easily see hundreds if not thousands of cases and many deaths!

Inform yourself — do not believe the demagogues!
Compare the severity of COVID-19 to the flu and other recent pandemics: http://adrianoil.blogspot.com/2020/04/to-all-who-compare-covid-19-to-seasonal.html
Compare today’s U.S. numbers: www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html
to what it would be without the commonsense measures in place now:
www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/03/a-new-analysis-predicts-1-1-million-coronavirus-deaths-in-a-medium-case-scenario/
Original study published by the Imperial College in London, which estimated the death rate from the pandemic if no control measures are taken: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf

You may say we need to go back to work to make money so we can survive, but is it worth your life, your health, and the health and life of others? In the richest country on Earth, nobody should be forced back to work during a pandemic. What you should do is demand that the stimulus money goes to people who need it to survive instead of big corporations. What you should do is support politicians who run to change the broken system and create sick leave, unemployment benefits and health insurance for everybody as a human right.

Read at the DT: Do not believe demagogues on coronavirus - Opinion - The Daily Telegram - Adrian, MI - Adrian, MI

We Need to Change Our Food System to Stop the Next Pandemic | Time

Once a dangerous new pathogen is out, as we are seeing, it can be difficult if not impossible to prevent it going global. One as contagious as SARS-CoV-2 has the potential to infect the whole of humanity. Eighty per cent of cases may be benign, but with such a large pool of susceptible hosts, the numbers who experience severe illness and die can still be shockingly high. So the only sensible answer to the question, how do we stop this from happening again, is: by doing all we can to prevent such pathogens infecting humans in the first place. And that means taking a long, hard look at our relationship with the natural world, and particularly with the animals that sustain us.


Agricultural laborers spray against insects and weeds inside the orchards of a fruit farm in Mesa, California. Brent Stirton—Getty Images

Continue reading at: We Need to Change Our Food System to Stop the Next Pandemic | Time

Scientific Research and Pandemic Prevention - EcoHealth Alliance

Building on over 45+ years of groundbreaking science, EcoHealth Alliance is a global environmental health nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting wildlife and public health from the emergence of disease.



Continue reading at: Scientific Research and Pandemic Prevention - EcoHealth Alliance

Dramatic Satellite Images Show Air Pollution Remains Low as Europeans Stay at Home

Further analyses are showing the continued low levels of nitrogen dioxide concentrations across Europe – coinciding with lockdown measures implemented to stop the spread of the coronavirus. New data from the Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite, from the European Union Copernicus program, show some cities seeing levels fall by 45—50% compared to the same period last year.


These images, using data from the Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite, show the average nitrogen dioxide concentrations from  March 13 to April 13, 2020, compared to the March-April averaged concentrations from 2019. The percentage decrease is derived over selected cities in Europe and has an uncertainty of around 15% owing to weather differences between 2019 and 2020. Credit: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2019-20), processed by KNMI/ESA

Continue reading at: Dramatic Satellite Images Show Air Pollution Remains Low as Europeans Stay at Home

To all who compare Covid-19 to the seasonal flu and think the shutdown is not necessary

To all who compare Covid-19 to the seasonal flu and think the shutdown is not necessary.

• Seasonal flues affect about 1,000,000,000 (that is 1 billion) people per year, causing 290,000 to 650,000 deaths - a death rate of 0.07%. Source: WHO March 1, 2020
• As of 4/15/2020, COVID-19 affected 1914916 people worldwide (confirmed cases) with 123010 confirmed deaths - that is a death rate of 6.42% - or about 100 times the death rate of a regular seasonal flu. Source: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/situation-reports/
• The only seasonal flu that was as devastating was the Spanish flue of 1918 that infected about 500 million people or one-third of the world's population and killed an estimated 50 million people (10%). Source: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/reconstruction-1918-virus.html
• All other significant epidemic and pandemic outbreaks in recent history infected far less people and/or had a much lower fatality (see Figure below)

Why we must close high-risk wildlife markets | Stories | WWF

The disease COVID-19 has caused a health crisis worldwide. We don't know the full and devastating reach of this pandemic yet, but we do understand how it underscores the destructive impacts of wildlife trade and consumption on human health and societies.

COVID-19, caused by the coronavirus, is a zoonotic disease, meaning it originated from an animal. The source of the outbreak is believed to have been a "wet market" in Wuhan, China, that sold live and dead wildlife and domestic animals, along with other foods for human consumption. Such markets can be a living petri dish, with viruses shed by stressed animals warehoused together mixing with other bodily fluids in unhygienic conditions. When these often new or unknown viruses jump to people, the results can be catastrophic.

Continue reading at: Why we must close high-risk wildlife markets | Stories | WWF

We just spent two weeks surveying the Great Barrier Reef. What we saw was an utter tragedy

Unfortunately, while the world is paralyzed by COVID-19, the climate catastrophe gets worse...


The 2020 coral bleaching event was the second-worst in more than two decades. ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies

Continue reading at: We just spent two weeks surveying the Great Barrier Reef. What we saw was an utter tragedy

New research suggests industrial livestock, not wet markets, might be origin of Covid-19

New research suggests industrial livestock, not wet markets, might be origin of Covid-19