endangered species Archives - Page 5 of 7

The FWP weekly digest of wondrous wildlife happenings
and other interesting items from the natural world

Creatures to meet | Things to learn
Things to do

Lisa S. French

Rescuing Coral Reefs: Cloud Brightening, Bionics, and Super Corals

3.5-minute read

If you’ve not had much mental bandwidth left to ferret out non-COVID-19 news, we totally empathize. In case you missed the story of the third mass bleaching event in five years of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, here’s a quick what’s what—along with a roundup of some inventive strategies aimed at keeping all of the world’s precious corals out of hot water.

Although some of the creature components of the natural world are currently experiencing a welcome period of rest and recovery, as a result of rising ocean temperatures, the large colonies of thousands of tiny animals that make up coral reefs are facing unprecedented heat stress that is exceeding their ability to adapt and survive. These architecturally complex living structures support beautifully biodiverse undersea communities that encompass up to 25 percent of all marine species, including 4000 types of fish and an estimated 8 million yet-to-be-discovered organisms. As critical parts of our planetary infrastructure, coral reef ecosystems contribute to the livelihoods of 500 million people in 100 countries, adding approximately 30 billion dollars to annual GDP.

Under normal environmental conditions, corals can live forever. Sadly, recurring and prolonged bleaching events caused by changes in water temperature and acidity as a result of oceans absorbing increasing levels of greenhouse gases (GHG’s) from the atmosphere have pushed corals beyond their comfort zone. During a bleaching event, stressed corals expel the symbiotic algae (zooxanthellae) embedded in their tissues, which they rely on for nutrition and which give them their often vibrant color. Without a consistent source of nourishment from their algal occupants, bleached corals slowly become weakened and may die, causing a chain reaction of equally adverse impacts for reef inhabitants. Depending on the amount of damage that occurs during a bleaching event, it can take decades for a coral reef to recover. To date, up to half of the world’s reefs have been severely damaged.

Okay, what’s the good news, you ask? Is there good news? Because we could use more of that. It’s undeniable that earth systems wait for no one, and our oceans have already been committed to a certain degree of warming. Now, one of the most important things we can do to create good news for corals and other marine wildlife is to help prevent bleaching events by reducing the GHG emissions that absorb radiation from the sun and raise ocean temperatures. As we sprint to ramp up mitigation efforts, scientists around the world from biologists to chemists to geophysicists are tackling the coral crisis from a few different angles in hope of changing the current trajectory from despair to repair. Here are some highlights from projects focused on saving our reef ecosystems from extinction:

Brightening Marine Clouds:
Earth scientists are geoengineering cloud parasols for the planet to cool waters around reefs and buy more time for corals. Through a process called marine cloud brightening, clouds are seeded with salt crystals to increase their reflectivity. These artificially enhanced bright clouds reflect solar radiation away from the earth lowering ocean temperatures in targeted reef areas. In late March, researchers at Southern Cross University in Australia conducted the first successful, small-scale cloud brightening experiment over a portion of the Great Barrier Reef. You can watch how they did it here.

Printing 3-D Bionic Corals:
Figuring out the symbiotic relationship between corals and algae will be critical for reef conservation in a warming world. To gain a better understanding of why corals expel algae under stress, bioengineers at the University of Cambridge have created bionic corals that can mimic the behavior of different coral species using biological materials and specialized 3-D printers. The Cambridge researchers also plan to construct large-scale colonies of man-made corals to grow algae for carbon capture and storage.

Breeding Climate Resilient Super Corals:
To create more resilient reef systems in anticipation of future warming, scientists at the Gates Coral Lab Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology are giving nature a helping hand through the breeding of corals that have successfully adapted to environmental stressors. By selecting the hardiest corals for reproduction and replicating various conditions of acidification, pollution, and temperature over time, marine biologists hope to grow more highly stress-tolerant super corals for use in reef restoration. You can learn more about these forward-thinking cultivators of corals in Coral Whisperers: Scientists on the Brink by Irus Braverman.

If you’re concerned about coral reefs and would like to keep tabs on how they’re holding up in near real-time, there are NOAA satellites for that at Coral Reef Watch.

You can also dive in and participate in some armchair ocean conservation by playing NeMO-Net, a new video game that helps train a NASA supercomputer to map the world’s corals.

If you’d like to follow a collaborative community of earth scientists working to maintain the healthy functioning of our planet, check out EarthCube.

And because gazing at marine life is good for you, to help tide you over until you’re free to roam, the Ocean Conservancy has coral reef wallpaper for your phone and desktop. Download away!

As always, hang in, stay safe, and be well!

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Lisa S. French April 29, 2020

Red Panda Pause

2.0-minute read to distract yourself while distancing

We’re guessing you haven’t spent any time recently (or perhaps ever) thinking about the facial features of endangered red pandas (Ailurus fulgens). But if you’re up for a time-in programming break, here’s a quick creature feature challenge to test your visual acuity. Look closely—can you tell the difference between the panda on the left and the one on the right? Do you think you could pick these two out of a line-up of identical-looking, gingery, bamboo eaters? They may appear alike, but the differences lie in their fine facial details. Even amongst experts, without obvious distinguishing markings to tell one red panda from another, monitoring their dwindling populations has posed a significant challenge. However, new developments in face recognition technology are making the gathering of conservation-critical information on animal species with subtle variations in appearance a whole lot easier.

Until recently, researchers had resorted to micro-chipping and collaring to identify and track at-risk species; now, computer vision tech upgrades are helping to eliminate the stress and risk of capturing and tagging threatened wildlife.

Working in close collaboration with biologists, computer scientists are creating AI-assisted facial recognition programs that map and record granular visual characteristics of individual animals. In much the same way facial recognition software works for humans, Automatic Individual Identification Methods used for wildlife first process and reorient the photographic images so that they are as close in size and shape to one another as possible. Then, distinguishing features such as eye size, fur texture, or whisker spots are isolated and identified for comparison to a database of existing images, greatly expanding researchers’ ability to pinpoint new individuals and track populations.

According to the IUCN, the number of red pandas in the world has decreased by 40% in the past 50 years. As a result of habitat loss and hunting, there are now only 16,000 to 20,000 left in the highland pine forests of Nepal, India, Myanmar, Bhutan, and China. Because every creature counts, for wildlife threatened with extinction like the red panda, innovations in machine learning are becoming increasingly important to monitoring their demographics, health, and response to environmental change. These transformative technologies also hold great potential for expanding the community of citizen conservationists by enabling the public to help track endangered species through online contributions to image database portals.

You can learn more about red panda particulars here and other animal facial recognition projects like LemurFaceID here, and Lion Identification Network of Collaborators here.

We hope you are hanging right on in there, but if the news updates start to feel overwhelming, here’s an NYC semi-pro tip to lighten up your headspace: even if your only view of the outdoors is through a window, remember to turn your face towards the sun and just breathe.

And, today is National Doctor’s Day! For all of the healthcare professionals on the front lines working around the clock to save lives, including the 79,000 medical volunteers in New York, here’s today’s uplifting open-window whoop of extreme gratitude from Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Replay as needed!

As always, take good care and be well.

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Lisa S. French March 30, 2020

Conservation Takes Flight

2.5-minute read

With one in four species currently at risk of extinction, conservationists dedicated to maintaining the biodiversity of our big, beautiful planet are tackling an urgent to-do list—from monitoring whale health to conducting penguin counts, to planting a trillion trees. Over the last decade, scientists have added a hi-tech tool to their arsenal to help solve some of our most challenging environmental problems—the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), commonly known as the drone.

Thanks in part to rapid innovation in smartphone technologies like the miniaturization of cameras, GPS, and sensory devices, advances in the development of environmental drone applications are revolutionizing the mapping, monitoring, and recovery of the natural world. Customized drones rigged out with mission-specific gear like tracking systems, optical and thermal cameras, and seed dispersers are enabling the observation, protection, and restoration of flora and fauna in both wide-open and previously inaccessible places.

One promising new drone design developed by Macquarie University in Sydney, NSW, Australia, is helping biologists to safely assess the health of marine megafauna. Sidling up to a pod of migrating humpback whales to collect biological samples is tricky business. Now, researchers can get a snapshot of the cetaceans’ physical condition through UAV capture of whale blow without endangering the animals—or the humans. If you are wondering what in the world whale blow is, it’s the vapor that forms from warm air exhaled through the blowhole in the top of a whale’s head when it surfaces to breathe. Drones swoop in and hover over the humpbacks and collect the vapor in a remote-controlled petri dish for analysis of respiratory bacteria, lipids, hormones, and DNA. These custom-built mini sky-labs are helping researchers keep tabs on health changes of individual marine mammals resulting from increasing environmental stressors like climate change and water pollution.

Another breakthrough in planet-preserving drone technology from U.K.-based environmental services company Dendra Systems may seriously speed up the rate of global reforestation and ecosystem restoration. Using a combination of satellite images and drone-collected data to pinpoint locations for seed dispersal, Dendra aims to plant 500 billion trees by 2060. Customized “SKAI-Tractors” capable of firing seedpods into the ground at the rate of 120 per minute will enable governments to restore forests 150 times faster and ten times cheaper than planting by hand. At a time when we are losing an estimated 27 soccer fields of forest every minute, Dendra’s technology represents a radical improvement in the speed and accuracy of reforestation.

In an effort to engineer an even faster, smarter drone, scientists at Brown University and the University of British Columbia are drawing inspiration from nature to enhance the speed and agility of the miniature flying machines by analyzing the uniquely flexible wing structure and flight dynamics of bats. Researchers believe that the stretchy skin and multi-jointed wing configuration of the furry, night fliers may hold the key to improving the lift, maneuverability, and efficiency of drones, especially when flying in challenging environments.

It’s clear that inventive upgrades in drone technologies used for reforestation, and wildlife and ecosystem monitoring and management will continue to play a pivotal role in combatting the increasing global threats to biodiversity. So, to all of you flight-tech game changers out there working to protect and preserve the natural heritage of our planet, first, thank you very much, and second, please drone on.

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Lisa S. French March 3, 2020

The Plight of the Bumblebee

3-minute read

Whether you look forward to the first spring flight of the bumblebee (Bombus) as a reassuring sign of nature’s capacity for renewal or are simply grateful for the fruits of the fuzzy pollinator’s labor, the recent study documenting its climate change-induced decline was a definite buzzkill. The new analysis of 66 bumblebee species across North America and Europe from researchers at the University of Ottawa and University College London reveals that over the last five decades, the growing number of unusually hot days is increasing local bumblebee extinction rates. Heatwaves and rising average temperatures have led to widespread loss of populations—an estimated 46% in North America and 17% in Europe.

Bumblebees evolved in cooler regions of the world over a period of about 100 million years, and scientists now believe that warmer winters and hotter summers resulting from global heating may exceed the iconic insect’s ability to adapt. At the current rate of emissions, it’s estimated that climate change may have greater negative impacts on the bee species than habitat loss, potentially resulting in mass extinction.

Like honey bees (Apis mellifera), wild bumblebees are important pollinators of crops and native plants, providing critical ecosystem and economic benefits for people and planet—absolutely free of charge. Both honey bees and bumblebees are accidental pollinators. In the process of drinking nectar and harvesting pollen for food, they pick up the finely-grained plant dust on their bodies or leg hair and transfer it from the anther to the stigma of the flower.

However, compared to its honey-producing cousin, the bumblebee is equipped with a few extra features that make it especially efficient at pollen gathering. Because bumblebees are bigger than honey bees, they can pick up and transfer more pollen per flower fly-by. Some species of bumblebees also have longer tongues than honey bees, not as long as this creature’s, but pretty impressive by bee standards. Longer-tongued bees are particularly skilled at lapping up nectar and pollen from hard-to-reach places in tubular flowers like honeysuckle and salvia. Bumblebees also have another expert tool in their pollen-gathering arsenal—buzz pollination, or sonication. By holding the flower with its legs or mouthparts and rapidly vibrating its flight muscles, the bumblebee can dislodge pollen from plants that can’t be pollinated through garden variety bee pollination methods. About eight percent of plants rely on this shake-and-take method of pollen gathering, including eggplants, tomatoes, potatoes, blueberries, and cranberries. In addition to its bigger size, longer tongue, and sonication skills, the bumblebee has an extended pollination season and can visit twice as many flowers per day as the honey bee.

Although bumblebees have an exceptional aptitude for pollen gathering, like many animal and plant species, their ability to adjust to the unprecedented environmental stressors of climate change is limited. Uncommonly warm winter temperatures can trick queen bumblebees into emerging from the hive well before pollen is available for food, leaving them too weak to return to the hive to lay eggs—no eggs, no bees. Come spring, higher-than-normal temperatures alter the scent, nectar, and pollen production of flowers, making them less attractive to foraging bees. And increased C02 in the atmosphere also reduces the protein level of pollen, resulting in smaller bumblebees. Smaller bees travel shorter distances, carry less pollen, and pollinate fewer flowers. To put these climate change casualties in perspective, 75 percent of the world’s flowering plants rely on pollinators for reproduction, including more than two-thirds of the world’s crops.

Unfortunately, less than one percent of bumblebee hotspots are currently protected. In a rapidly warming world, conservation aimed at maintaining habitats for the 250 species of bumblebees and assisting the insects with colonization beyond their normal range is crucial to their survival. If you’d like to help ensure that bumblebees have a soft landing wherever they roam and continue to contribute to everyday essentials, here are some tips on what to plant on your city or country patch to keep these precious pollinators buzzing:

Bumbles prefer:

Perennials because they produce more nectar than annuals
Native perennials because they produce more nectar and pollen than sterile hybrids
Symmetric two-sided flowers
Pink and violet-colored flowers

And here’s a short list of the bumblebees’ perennial favorites that you can plant from rooftop to roadside:

Daisy family (Asteraceae)
Common daisies, cornflowers, chamomile,
yarrow, fleabane, asters, dahlias, coneflowers

Flowering pea family (Fabaceae)
Lupine, mimosa, wisteria, clover

Mint family (Lamiaceae)
Sage, mint, rosemary, lavender, thyme,
lemon balm, hyssop, chaste, patchouli

You can learn more about what makes the bee bumble and how you can become a citizen conservationist from the Xerces Society and the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. For a deeper drill-down into the fascinating world of bees of all sorts, we highly recommend The Bee, A Natural History.

If you’ve got access to a front, back or side yard, or any other personal patch, you can find out how to grow climate-resilient, environmentally beneficial communities of plants that you, the bees, and other wildlife will love living within the excellent Bringing Nature Home and Planting in a Post-Wild World. And if you’re a city dweller in need of some perennial planting inspiration, visit the elevated gardens at the High Line in NYC (online or in-person) created by Dutch perennial plant master, Piet Oudolf. We may have a slight hometown bias, but as gardens go, it truly is the bee’s knees.

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Lisa S. French February 22, 2020

Preserving the Music of Trees

2.5-minute read

Acoustic or electric, soul-soothing or headbanging, the tonal quality of the guitar music that puts you in the zone is greatly influenced by the types of wood used to craft the body, neck, and fingerboard of the instrument. Whether it’s sourced from a common tree species like ash, spruce, or maple, or an exotic tropical like ebony, rosewood, or mahogany, the wood used to construct guitars, known as tonewood, has unique characteristics—such as density, resonance, texture, and warp resistance—that lend that special something to the sound of the strings. As a result of decades of deforestation, legal and illegal logging for export, and the introduction of invasive insects and disease, many of the trees used to produce the world’s most valuable tonewoods are now under threat.

To identify eco-friendly alternatives to endangered tree species, researchers in Germany and Finland are working to unpick the acoustic properties of rare tonewoods. In the meantime, Taylor and Fender, industry leaders in the art and science of building stringed instruments, have stepped up to launch two propagation and planting projects designed to help save the imperiled ebony and ash trees used to create the distinctive sounds of their guitars.

The jet-black, extremely durable, insect-resistant heartwood of the African ebony tree (Diospyros crassiflora) is one of the most prized and expensive woods on the planet. Ebony heartwood has been used for centuries to make everything from ships and sculptures to furniture and flooring. It is also one of the best woods for stringed instrument fingerboards and the one preferred by many acoustic and electric guitar manufacturers. One of 10,000 tree species currently facing extinction, African ebony trees grow in small, isolated clusters in lowland rainforests from Nigeria to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. During the last century, over 50% of ebony have been cut down. Almost all of the large trees from the slow-growing species have been harvested for export. Researchers at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in the Netherlands estimate that 10 to 30% of those exports are illegally logged.

Enter Taylor Guitars and the Ebony Project: a pioneering conservation partnership between the guitar manufacturer, UCLA, the Congo Basin Institute, and The Higher Institute of Environmental Sciences. Based in Cameroon, Africa, the Ebony Project was established to protect and conserve the rare tree species, develop livelihoods for rural communities, reforest degraded land, and increase rainforest habitat. Trained by Ebony Project staff, local communities learn to build and maintain nurseries and propagate and grow ebony saplings. The nurseries are donated to the community to grow other valuable food and medicinal trees for sale or personal use, including mango, avocado, and kola. With the ultimate goal of planting 15,000 trees, the Ebony Project aims to create a sustainable model for the production of the exotic tonewood that also provides critical social and economic benefits to local people. Thriving forests, self-sufficient rural communities, and more guitar music for your ears—a conservation triple win.

And in Cleveland Ohio, home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, FWP tree-planting partner American Forests has launched the Roots of Rock initiative with Fender Musical Instruments and researchers at the U.S. Forest Service in an effort to save the ash tree (Fraxinus Americana) from the hungry maw of the emerald ash borer (EAB). Fender has used ash to construct its legendary electric guitars for 70 years, but since the EAB arrived in the U.S. in 2002, the invasive species has destroyed hundreds of millions of ash trees in North America putting the future of rock at risk. To ensure Fender aficionados can continue to practice their musical artistry, the Roots of Rock team is identifying trees that have successfully warded off the voracious insect. Seeds and shoots from those resilient trees are being used to breed an EAB-resistant variety of ash that will help restore the species to its former glory. Knowledge gained from the Roots of Rock initiative to preserve the music of trees will also be used to combat invasive insects and diseases that threaten the survival of other native species to better protect the health and biodiversity of forests in North America and around the world.

You can learn more about the Roots of Rock Initiative here and read a progress report on the Ebony Project here. Oh, and by the way, rock on!

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Lisa S. French February 4, 2020

Towering Trees

At Weekly Wondrous, we believe that every tree is a winner. Because what’s not to like about a carbon-storing, water-purifying, habitat-providing, lovely, leafy planet fixture? However, to clinch official “champion” status, a tree has to possess that special something such as exceptional height, width, or age that makes it stand out in its field—or forest.

In 2019, two statuesque rainforest dwellers made the cut and were added to the official A-list of champion trees for record-breaking height: a 290-foot angelim vermelho (Dinizia excelsa) located in the Paru State Forest in Brazil, and a 339-foot yellow meranti (Shorea faguetiana) located in the Malaysian state of Sabah on the island of Borneo.

Towering 21 stories above the forest floor, the leviathan angelim vermelho was tracked down deep in the heart of the Brazilian rainforest by indomitable researchers from the Universities of Jequitinhonha and Muscari Valleys in Brazil, and Cambridge in the United Kingdom. Now hailed as the tallest tree in Amazonia, the tropical hardwood is about the same height as the Statue of Liberty, give or take a torch. Common across Guyana and northern Brazil, the average angelim vermelho grows to approximately 160 – 190 feet tall and is typically harvested for its durable timber, which is used for everything from boatbuilding to floorboards to bridges. It’s believed that the recently discovered giant was able to achieve a remarkable 100 feet of additional growth undisturbed as a result of its remote location in the Amazon basin, one of the most biodiverse ecoregions on Earth.

In June, researchers from the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Nottingham introduced the world to the tallest tropical tree known to date, the 339-foot yellow meranti, dubbed “Menara” (Malay for “tower”) which soars over the Danum Valley Conservation Area in Borneo. Almost 50 feet taller than its Brazilian rainforest rival and so far, second in height only to famed Hyperion, a majestic 380-foot coast redwood in Redwood National Park in California, the mammoth yellow meranti is also a contender for tallest flowering plant in the world. The endangered tree species can currently be found in Indonesia, Thailand, and the Phillipines as well as Malaysia, although numbers are decreasing due to logging and land-use change.

While we are on the subject of top-notch trees, we would like to extend a little local love to the “Queen’s Giant,” the largest and oldest tree In New York City. The 133-foot tall tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera) located in Flushing Queen’s Alley Pond Park is estimated to be approximately 350 years old. Although somewhat of a pipsqueak by Brazil, and Borneo standards, the flowering favorite remains a colossus in our hearts.

If you live in the United States and would like to join the global ranks of intrepid tree-trackers, you can locate, measure, and nominate the most tremendous tree you can find for inclusion in the National Register of Champion Trees through our planting partners at American Forests.

Whether a world champion tree, the biggest on the block, or a beloved backyard beauty, we’re always delighted to welcome another green growing presence to the planet. You can introduce one of your own by planting a tree with Favorite World Press this holiday season or any time of the year. No digging required!

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Lisa S. French December 18, 2019

Saving Saigas

If you were to imagine a cross between Bambi and a snuffleupagus, you might come up with something that looks a lot like the saiga antelope (Saiga tatarica). With its wide doe eyes and large, twin-pipe breathing apparatus, the honey-colored, goat-sized saiga is one of the most whimsical-looking of the spiral-horned antelopes; it is also one of the most threatened animals on Earth. Currently classified as critically endangered, which is the next to last stop on the harrowing road to extinction, the saiga antelope is at very high risk of vanishing from the wild.

Although saigas have roamed the planet since the era of the woolly mammoth, as far back as 2.6 million years, and were abundant across Eastern Europe, Asia, and Alaska throughout the 19th century, their population plummeted from one million in the 1990s to just 60,000 by 2005. Extinct in China for the last five decades, migratory herds of saiga antelopes can now only be found on the vast grassy plains of the Eurasian steppe in remote areas of Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Russia, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Conservationists working to bring the species back from the brink have faced two major challenges, widespread poaching and climate change-induced vulnerability to viral disease that led to a massive die-off in 2015.

Like an elephant’s tusks and a pangolin’s scales, the translucent amber horns of the male saiga are highly coveted for use in traditional medicine, making the antelope an especially valuable target for poachers. As a consequence of rampant poaching over a fifteen-year period, the reduction in the number of saiga males available for mating in proportion to females led to a significant decrease in the rate of new births, and ultimately, reproductive collapse. Following a decade of strategic conservation efforts and enforcement of anti-poaching legislation, the saiga population had rebounded to 300,000 by late spring of 2015 when hundreds of thousands of females gathered on the steppe of Kazakhstan to give birth. In a widely documented mass mortality event which has now been linked to a rapid increase in temperature and humidity, over a three week period, 200,000 saiga mothers and newborn calves succumbed to a respiratory virus reducing the total population to 103,000, once again leaving the struggling animals teetering on the edge.

And now for some good and hopeful news, because we can always use a bit more of that in general, but especially when it comes to animals on the verge of extinction: saiga conservation groups working in collaboration with the Royal Veterinary College reported in May 2019 that as a result of ongoing anti-poaching work, disease management, and habitat protection the saiga population doubled to approximately 228,000 between 2016 and 2018. And because lowering vulnerability to climate change-related stressors is key to safeguarding endangered species like the saiga, scientists from the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum are also exploring whether the antelopes are flexible enough to relocate. If, like their ice-age ancestors, they are able to survive in colder areas outside of their current semi-arid steppe habitat, the risk of another heat-induced viral infection epidemic may be diminished.

Whether racing against the clock to save the saiga, the right whale, or the rhino, researchers, scientists, and NGOs around the world dedicated to the conservation of the 6,127 species listed as critically endangered have their work cut out for them. Rapid and continuing habitat loss, poaching, and environmental degradation, along with newly emerging viral diseases related to climate change make biodiversity conservation an especially complex and challenging problem that requires unique, ground-breaking, and sustainable solutions.

Speaking of conservation solutions, you can learn about some game-changing innovations from the Nature Conservancy and find out what the next generation of MIT scientists are cooking up on the biodiversity front at the Environmental Solutions Initiative. If you are prone to rooting for the underdog, or the under-antelope, as we are at Weekly Wondrous, you can lend your support to the Saiga Conservation Alliance at the Wildlife Conservation Network. And if you’d like to give a conservation scientist a holiday hug of gratitude for helping to protect and preserve the wild and the wondrous, you may do that wherever you happen to find one.

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Lisa S. French December 10, 2019

Best Bird

It’s bird award season in the southern hemisphere–that special time in late spring when birdwatchers around the world cast their votes online for the annual “it” bird of New Zealand. On November 11, this year’s favored flapper, the endangered yellow-eyed penguin, toddled past its top rival, the charismatic kākāpō, to be crowned 2019 Bird of the Year by New Zealand’s leading independent conservation organization Forest & Bird.

The yellow-eyed penguin, also known as the hoiho, which is Maori for noise shouter, is the world’s oldest and rarest penguin species—only 225 pairs of the seabird remain on New Zealand’s mainland. With its distinctive yellow peepers, pink feet, and slate-blue back and flippers, the hoiho is an unmistakable presence in the island nation’s coastal forests. Generally a solitary, quiet bird, the yellow-eyed penguin earned its Maori moniker due to the high-pitched braying sound it makes in nesting areas.

The Bird of the Year competition was launched in 2005 to raise awareness of New Zealand’s many remarkable native bird species and the threats to their survival. Currently, 80% of New Zealand’s birds are in trouble, and one out of three are at risk of extinction, including the hoiho and the kākāpō. You can learn more about all of the 2019 Forest & Bird contestants and their conservation status here.

If viewing all of the feathered finery down-under has you suffering from a bout of birdwatcher’s envy, here are some resources, tips, and upcoming events for budding and full-blown birders up-top:

You can get facts, photos, and vocalizations for more than 600 North American bird species at Cornell Labs ultimate online ornithology resource, allaboutbirds.org.

If you’d like to get a handle on how birds in your neck of the woods will be impacted by climate change under different warming scenarios, Audubon scientists have created an amazing app for that: Survival By Degrees: 389 Bird Species on the Brink. Just type in your U.S. postal code to find out which birds in your county will be affected by increasing global temperatures and how you can help support the Audubon mission.

From December 14 through January 5, you can put your bird-by-bird watching to really good use by participating in the 120^th annual Christmas Bird Count, helping to collect data that will be used to analyze the health of bird populations across the Americas.

And because winter really is coming, here’s a zero-effort habitat gardening tip: rather than cutting back any perennials on your patch, go wild and leave seed-bearing plant tops intact as a snack station to attract winter bird fly-bys. Not tidy perhaps, but tasty, and tasty rules when it comes to keeping the feathered ones in full chirp mode.

Whether you are slogging through snow in the north or celebrating spring in the south, wherever you walk through the beauty of the world, remember to keep an ear out for the winged wonders. That’s a free Earth music download—and it’s good for you!

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Lisa S. French November 21, 2019

Kelp Keepers

Widely admired for its conspicuous cuteness, the sea otter is proving to be far more than just another appealingly furry face. Research into this keystone species’ role in maintaining carbon-storing macroalgae, commonly known as kelp, indicates that the bewhiskered marine mammals may be important allies in the battle against climate change. One of 13 otter species, and the largest member of the weasel family, sea otters can be found floating about in coastal waters in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Japan, and the Russian Federation. As their name suggests, sea otters spend the majority of their lives in the ocean, preferring to feed, sleep, and raise their pups in close proximity to kelp, which they use as cover from predators and to anchor themselves and their young when resting.

Equivalent to an underwater rainforest, densely layered kelps are an integral component of healthy marine ecosystems, providing food and shelter for myriad species including fish, shellfish, seabirds, harbor seals, and sea lions. In addition to functioning as critical habitat, recent analysis suggests that kelp forests also have immense potential for permanently storing large amounts of carbon dioxide—up to a whopping 634 million tons per year, an amount greater than the annual emissions of Australia.

One of the reasons that kelp is an especially effective sequester of carbon is because it grows quite rapidly, as much as two feet per day, attaching to undersea rocks with root-like structures called holdfasts. Unfortunately, kelp’s natural nemesis, the sea urchin, is particularly fond of feasting on holdfasts, causing the macroalgae to detach from rock surfaces, drift, and die. Left unchecked, the spiny invertebrates can form hungry herds large enough to decimate undersea forests. And that’s where the sea otter comes in—alongside crabs, mussels, and clams, sea urchins happen to be a favorite food of the voracious shellfishionados. By keeping sea urchin populations under control, otters help to ensure kelp’s survival. Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz have estimated that the presence of otters in a coastal habitat increased the sequestration capacity of kelp forests by 4.4 to 8.7 megatons—and they support this valuable ecosystem service every day, absolutely free of charge—give or take a sea urchin or two.

When sea otters were hunted for their fur to near extinction in the 18th and 19th centuries, coastal kelp forests and many of the creatures that relied upon them for survival all but vanished. Effectively eliminating the sea otter from its ecological niche had profoundly detrimental cascade effects on other species in its marine community. Although still currently classified as endangered, over the past century, as a result of dedicated conservation efforts, Pacific otter populations have rebounded from a low of several thousand to approximately 148,000 across Canada, Alaska, Washington, and California. And, as the kelp keepers have returned to their historic range, so have the undersea forests and their inhabitants.

As our knowledge of the interdependence of living things continues to evolve, and we learn more about how mutually beneficial relationships between species like sea otters and kelp can help to maintain biodiversity and contribute to ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration, history serves to remind us that in nature, as in life, sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.

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Lisa S. French October 16, 2019

Rhino Redux

In honor of World Rhino Day, here’s a short but sweet update on our restoring rhinos post. On September 11, 2019, Ol Pejeta Conservancy announced a groundbreaking achievement in assisted reproduction: the successful creation of two viable northern white rhino embryos from the functionally-extinct species as part of the Bio Rescue research project. Bio Rescue is an international consortium of scientists and conservationists committed to pushing the frontiers of science in an effort to save the northern white rhino from extinction through the advancement of assisted reproduction and stem cell-associated techniques. A comprehensive risk assessment ensuring the welfare of egg donors Najin and Fatu, the last two northern white rhinos on Earth, was critical to the success of the project. The two embryos resulting from this pioneering work are currently being stored in liquid nitrogen awaiting transfer to surrogate mothers in the not too distant future. We’re keeping our ears peeled for the pitter-patter of dainty three-toed feet.

You can learn more about other dedicated global efforts to protect and preserve endangered species and the places they roam here.

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Lisa S. French September 22, 2019